


Dark Approach

by gwyneth rhys (gwyneth)



Series: Dark Approach [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Everybody Just Wants Steve To Be Happy, Find Bucky, Flashbacks, Found Family, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Torture, Longing, M/M, Memory Loss, Multi, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Soooo Many Flashbacks, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-09-09
Packaged: 2018-01-26 23:30:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 93,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1706558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwyneth/pseuds/gwyneth%20rhys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I have loved you across decades and centuries, over countries and continents and oceans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jamais Vu

 

But there on the shining metal  
His hands had put instead  
An artificial wilderness  
And a sky like lead.

\- _The Shield of Achilles_ , W.H. Auden

* * *

 

Screeching metallic whine rises up inside, the sound of gears stripped and grinding against each other. Shrieks up along his spine, echoes in his head, cascades back down, and then fades into silence. All that’s left is his hollow heartbeat. He stares at the picture of himself a little longer, a buzz building to crescendo in the back of his mind.

Everything he knows is a lie.

But this isn’t, can’t be. That man doesn’t lie to anyone, didn’t lie to him, because here’s proof. That man was his friend.

The word rolls around in his head like a tumbleweed in a dust storm. Over vast empty stretches of desert, blank, featureless. The meaning is obscured. He had a friend once. He was a friend.

He hears the scrape of the metal as it bends around him, the shrill wail of it collapsing under the weight. He might throw up if he stays, so he rushes for the exit.

He had a friend once. Someone he’d tried to kill.

After he had pulled the man out of the water, left him on the bank of Roosevelt Island, the soldier had gone to ground, found an SUV in a parking lot and drove it to a dark spot under a bridge, climbed in back, and lay down. He was in shock, his arm broken, his wet clothing lowering his body temperature to unsafe levels. He curled up, shaking, but he knew he’d heal.

There are things he knows, but he doesn’t know how he knows them.

Two days passed, after which he could move the arm again, so he went back to the old man’s house. Names don’t mean much to him; he remembers them solely by their roles, and the old man was the one in charge. Pulled the crime scene tape down and looked around. Something had happened here, he knew that, too. Someone he killed. Or helped to kill. He can’t remember. But he knew the house, he knew to go there, so...some fragment of certainty has guided him here.

He smashed the safe open with his metal arm, took the money, jewelry, and bearer bonds there, didn’t look at the documents but knew to take them as well. He rifled through closets until he found some clothes that fit him well enough to get him to a store where he could buy more, make himself nondescript, hide the arm. Plastic bags so he can stash all this stuff somewhere.

What little food in the refrigerator and cupboards he ate all of, hunger gnawing through him in a way he could not remember before. In the basement he found another bathroom, so he curled up in the safest place, the tub, knife in hand, to sleep for the night. There were no dreams these nights, nothing that he can remember, but there’s a constant noise in the back of his head, the scraping metallic screech, and the voice of his target: “You’re my friend.”

_He knew me. I knew him._

These words, _I_ and _me_ , are unfamiliar to the soldier, he hasn’t thought them in...he can’t remember if he ever did. He is the soldier, the asset. There is no room for I and me. There is only an assignment and when that is over, cold darkness.

Through the night he woke again and again to that shriek, and that voice, and still another voice, the one that he didn’t recognize. Was it the voice of James Buchanan Barnes? How would he know?

In the morning, he came up with a plan. Any safe houses or bolt holes would have been compromised, or in danger of being compromised. His legend would have been burned. There would be no Hydra location left for him to return to; even those who survived or hadn’t been taken would have gone underground.

No place that was left to him. So he went in search of the man who was his friend. That was something at least he could hold on to.

He knows how to acquire a target. He knows how to hide the soldier and interact with people, enough to complete his mission. To shut down the screaming, clanging din this time, and find out more about Steve Rogers, Captain America, and James Buchanan Barnes. It leads him to this exhibit with this intel and that makes him run for cover.

It’s pouring rain outside when he finally gets out of the building, but there are still people everywhere. When he puts his back up against the wall, the metallic wail comes back to him, comes up from inside him and escapes his mouth, and he slides halfway down the wall.

The dissonance is like the clanging of the cryochamber door, it echoes through him, ricocheting. A woman comes over to him and asks him, “Hey, hey, are you all right? Do you need help?” He doesn’t know if it’s the rain or tears, but he wipes at his wet face and breathes, attempting to control the sobs that won’t be controlled. “I could call 911,” the young woman offers.

Shaking his head violently, he says, “No. No!” Someone’s standing behind her, a man and a kid, and the man reaches for her as the soldier says, “I’m all right.”

“Leave him alone, honey,” the guy says, adding, “he doesn’t need anyone bothering him.” She hesitates to leave him, but finally steps away and the guy says to her, trying to keep his voice low but he hears it anyway, “I told you not to get involved.”

“Shut up,” she says with exasperation. “Not getting involved isn’t a lesson I’m going to teach Jason.” He assumes she’s talking about the kid.

An image flashes inside his mind, ghostly and pale but elemental enough: the man, Steve, says to him, “I can’t just sit by, Buck, when someone’s in trouble.” He’s small and skinny, like the pictures in the exhibit. Bleeding from his mouth and his clothes a shambles.

He hears his own voice in response: “It’s not gonna help anyone when you get yourself beat to a pulp trying to defend them.” He reaches out a hand and puts it on Steve’s shoulder. “I’m the one who’s gotta worry about _you_. Okay?”

Shuddering, he stands up and stumbles off to find someplace less exposed. The soldier may not want to find Steve Rogers, but Bucky will.

 

Steve swipes his hand over his mouth, once, twice. He thinks he might be sick, but he hasn’t experienced this sensation ever since the change, so he’s kind of forgotten what it was like.

“What the hell did they do to him?”

Sam meets his eyes; he looks like he’s about to gag. “This is some fucked-up shit right here.”

They’re looking at a...chair, if you could call it that, in the safe-deposit vault of an old bank near the Capitol. There are tools Steve can’t even begin to imagine the function of, pieces that obviously fit over someone’s head, straps on the arms and legs. Syringes. Monitors, electrodes. A biteguard. It’s like the sinister version of Howard Stark’s lab when he was changed, like a vivisection chamber. Nothing here looks as if it is used for anything good.

Natasha had called him with the location, one of many operational outposts the remnants of SHIELD and the FBI had uncovered during mop-up. “It might be worth a look, but...” her unsteady voice had trailed off and after a lengthy pause, she’d resumed with, “if it’s anything like some of the other sites we’ve found, it could be more than you’re ready for.”

At the time, he’d thought, well, how much worse could it have been than that grotesque Soviet file she’d passed to him? Famous last words.

Sam sucks in a raggedy breath and walks over to a table near the chair, covered with papers and photos. He motions to the FBI guy in the corner and gets a nod of approval, then picks something up and looks at it, holds it toward Steve. It’s a schematic of Bucky’s metal arm, and underneath that a grainy photo of the way the metal socket was fused to his gnarled and twisted flesh.

“I really am going to be sick,” Steve says harshly and drives a fist into the chair. The top section flies apart into a couple dozen pieces and Steve walks over to the wall of safe-deposit boxes, resting his head against the cold metal, the sharp poke of handles, buttons, number plates digging into his skin and quelling the need to puke. The FBI guy takes a step toward him, then seems to think better of it, and resumes his place. Chastising Captain America for destroying evidence is probably the last thing he wants to do.

He’d been so consumed with guilt when Bucky died, but it was nothing compared to the way this knowledge now lays waste to the very heart, the very soul of him. Seventy years of torture, of suffering. Maybe Sam had been right, maybe there was no way to save someone who’d been treated this way.

He bangs his head lightly against the metal a few times, until Sam’s hand closes over his shoulder and his gentle voice says, “Steve, man, come away from here. Let’s get out of here and regroup.” Sam leads him away by the arm and it’s only then that he realizes he’s crying.

Outside the bank the sidewalk teems with agents, most of them moving equipment and boxes labeled “Evidence.” How many sites are there like this one, places where Hydra was doing its dirty work right under everyone’s noses, or with their complicity? Of course, there were none like this, because this was where they tortured Bucky, where they made him sit in that chair and take whatever punishment they’d devised to keep him in line.

They’re still waiting to hear where the actual cryochamber was; Steve’s not sure if he wants them to find it, if he can handle seeing that thing.

Sam sticks him in the passenger seat of his new SUV and gets in on his side, closing the door as quietly as he can, as if loud noises will rattle Steve and he'll lose control. His friend sighs with deep resignation.

“You have to let go of this idea that it’s your fault.” He’s staring straight ahead when he says it, and there’s an edge to his voice, like he knows that Steve is not going to let go of that idea no matter what and he’s getting fed up with saying it.

“If you knew what happened, then you’d know it is. It was true seventy years ago, and it’s still true now.”

“That’s bullshit, man, it’s just bullshit. You could not have prevented him from being captured and experimented on, you were barely even this guy, this supersoldier, at that point. What could you have done differently? Everything you’ve told me about him is exactly the kind of thing every soldier since the dawn of time has done -- put himself on the line doing his duty. You think he didn’t know something terrible could happen to him the day he got his papers?”

“But I--”

Sam cuts him off with a “Steve!” gritted out between his teeth and a slam of his hand on the steering wheel. “I’m gonna slap you upside the head if you say it one more time.”

He knows Sam’s right and he knows Sam’s also wrong. They’ve been doing this for days now, ever since he got that folder from Natasha. Steve’s guilt consumes him, Sam hollers at him for it, they call a truce, and then they do it all over again. The worst part is that he knows Bucky would sneer at him for it and tell him Sam was right. If he had a voice... Steve can’t stop seeing that face mask bounce to the ground, what he has come to think of as a muzzle. Keep him silent, keep the essence of the man pushed down ever further with whatever means you could. The dark glasses and the eye black and the muzzle kept him faceless, characterless. _Keep him obedient when you torture him._ He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to stem the tears that threaten again.

Steve clears his throat and finally looks at Sam. “I don’t know what to do. I thought I had a plan...”

“We’ll figure it out. This has just thrown you. Everything you talked about before, we can still do.”

“I used to know him well enough to know how he thought. What he would do. But now I can’t even imagine what his next steps would be after he pulled me out of the river.”

“Steve, man, listen. You can’t know what to do because there’s no precedent for this. None. In the history of the world, no one has ever had to deal with a situation like this. It’s _insane._ But that history that’s causing you so much pain is actually an advantage -- you fought side by side with him for a long time, you grew up together. That will help you figure it out, but you can’t until you let go of this blame. It obscures your vision.”

He nods a couple times to show he’s listening. Sam is the voice of reason about these things, but Steve no more knows how to let go of his crushing sense of responsibility for this than he can change back to that scrawny little guy before the serum.

“Tell you what, let’s go home, get something to eat, go for a run -- or you know, you run, I’ll stroll -- and then we can start again.”

“Yeah. Yeah, we can do that.” Helplessness is so unfamiliar to Steve, having no direction, no ideas. Not being a leader. “I appreciate you keeping me in line.” He gives Sam a wan smile. “I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect it to be this hard.”

“Well, maybe that’s another advantage you’ve got. It _is_ hard for you because he meant so much to you. He’s working from a blank slate. You have the benefit of his history. You loved each other.”

Steve turns his gaze out the window as Sam puts the car in gear. “Yeah. Yeah, we did.”

****

Bucky giggled beside him on the merry-go-round. Every time Steve counted another star, Bucky shouted a different number, then laughed, until Steve finally gave up because he lost count again.

“Geez, Buck, stop it.” Then he burst into a giggle fit himself. The merry-go-round spun lazily as Bucky gave it a light push with his foot. Funnily enough, he didn’t feel sick, even with all the spinning.

“Why, Steve Rogers, I do believe you’re drunk!” Bucky poked him in the side, but not hard, because he would never do that to Steve.

“If I’m not, then you just wasted a whole lot of money on hooch.” He coughed. “And anyway, you made me that way.” He took another sip of the whiskey Bucky had brought to the park. They would get in so much trouble if they were caught here, but then, most of the things Bucky talked him into doing would result in trouble, so he was used to it. Still, everyone had been doing crazy things ever since war had been declared in Europe, so he hoped that if a flatfoot came along and discovered them, he’d just shoo them off with a warning or something.

Bucky hauled himself up by a bar and loomed over Steve. “’s good stuff, though, right?”

“I wouldn’t have anything to compare it to.” He peered at the label in the dark, but he couldn’t read it. Even if drinking would have been legal for most of his life, he still wouldn’t have wanted to, with his health issues and all. The first time he’d tried some bootleg whiskey Bucky had scared up in his mysterious way, Steve had coughed so badly that he was unable to breathe, and it had taken him hours to recover. Bucky had avoided ever bringing it up again. But somehow this night, when Bucky had shown up with a bottle and an invitation to lie outside under a warm velvet sky and count stars, Steve had thought, why not? The fact that he frequently thought “why not” when Bucky convinced him to do stupid things hadn’t exactly assisted him in making an intelligent decision.

“Where did you get the money for this?” Steve asked. He couldn’t imagine that the little odd jobs Bucky took here and there provided him enough money to spend on good booze, after he’d given most of it to his and Steve’s rent, his parents, and bought some food. Things may have evened out in the past couple years, but no one Steve knew was what you could call flush, let alone dependably employed.

“Aw, you know, pick stuff up here and there.” He took a swig from the dwindling bottle and Steve glimpsed the dark wetness of his lips in the faint street light. Steve knew every curve and line in Bucky’s face, and his mouth was one of Steve’s favorite studies.

“You’re not running paper for that bookie again, are you?”

“Nah, nah, not that. I don’t want the hassle from Mr. Goody Two Shoes here.”

“I just don’t want you thrown in the clink, is all. I don’t have a lot of friends. So I’d like to keep the ones I do have.” He wished he had his sketchpad here now so he could ask Bucky to stay just like that, let him draw by the pale light this face and body Steve so admired.

Bucky lay back down and started counting, laughing as he went, “One...two...threefourfive.”

Steve said, “Sixteen!” and Bucky burst out laughing. He wasn’t sure why they were laughing at this point, but he felt loose and...well, stupid.

“You’re a skinny little punk, is what you are.”

“Do you think we’ll go to war, too?” Steve asked abruptly. It had been on his mind constantly, as it was with almost everyone who remembered the Great War.

Bucky shrugged elaborately. There weren’t many people who could get as much mileage out of a shrug as Bucky Barnes. “If we do, it won’t matter for you. You’d never have to worry about going.”

“Thank you for the compliment.”

“Ah, I didn’t mean it that way. I just want you to be safe, you know that.”

“I do.” Steve could feel that familiar warmth creep through his belly, up into his chest, something that happened whenever Bucky talked about taking care of him. He sighed dramatically. “It’s just, I’d want to do my part.”

“Of course you would.” Bucky’s voice had become dry and sharp.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Steve asked peevishly. He hoped he wasn’t a sloppy drunk, like Bucky’s dad, but there was only one way to find out, so he took another swig.

“Don’t get yourself in a tizzy. I just mean...You’re the best fella I’ve ever met. Whatever’s the right thing to do, that’s what you’ll want to do.” Steve turned his head to gaze at him, and Bucky closed his perfect mouth in a tight line before turning his face away. “I can never figure out what you’re doing with a dope like me.”

Steve was too lightheaded to think straight, but he pulled himself upright. “You’re not a dope. You’re swell. Nobody could ask for a better friend.”

Bucky sat up too, his face exceedingly close to Steve’s, and Steve’s heart began an erratic marching tempo in his chest. “Is that all I am?”

He wasn’t sure he understood, or if it was the booze making him thickheaded. “What do you mean?” The martial beat slowed and his chest grew tight -- Steve fretted that he might be about to have an asthma attack.

“Ah, never mind,” Bucky answered, sweeping a hand through his hair. They both looked up at the sky, acutely awkward in a way they had never been before. Steve tried to figure out what he’d said to make Bucky uncomfortable.

“So, where _did_ you get the money?” It was easier to change the subject. And anyway, he really was curious what Buck was up to. He’d moved into their tiny apartment after Steve’s ma had died, trying to help make ends meet so Steve could attend art classes. And that had allowed Steve to see just how hard Bucky worked for them both, and for his parents, as well. Only a fraction of his money went to himself; it was always other people he did for. But lately he’d taken to disappearing from time to time, but not on dates that Steve could see. And he’d had the dough to take them both out for an occasional meal and maybe a double feature.

Bucky polished off the last of the whiskey and made an exaggerated “oh no!” face at him as he shook the bottle, then laughed and threw it in the sand. Steve would pick that up before they left, of course. “You really wanna know where I get the money? Might not like what you hear,” he said.

“Uh, yeah,” Steve said, nervous but too stubborn to show it. His deepest fear was that Bucky might turn to petty crime in order to help him out, or worse, something more significant.

“You know the fairies hanging around those dark little bars and around the hotel? Sometimes I go out with them.” His eyes glinted in the light, a mean sparkle to them, but Steve was pretty sure he was trying to get his goat by saying such a thing.

“Don’t call them that, it’s not nice.” Steve shook his head, which made him dizzy, and squinted one eye closed, scowling at Bucky. “Stop pulling my leg,” he said sternly.

Shrugging, Bucky made a sour face and said, “I figured you’d act all wet. You asked. I told. Believe what you want to believe.”

“But why would you...why...I mean, what would you do that for?”

“A sawbuck, usually.” Bucky was positively leering at him by then. He didn’t care if men were like that, but he wasn’t sure why Bucky would tell him this -- to shock him or something, he supposed.

Steve’s eyebrows felt like they shot up to his hairline. “They _pay_ you to go out with them?”

“That’s not all I do, Steve. Don’t be so dim. Some of those fellas have good money, and they’ll give you a five-spot or a ten for a little attention, especially if you’re a good-looking swell.” One thing you could say for Bucky, he was aware of his own allure.

“Attention.”

Bucky was truly exasperated with him now, his usual humor slipping away and exposing something harsh, raw. Steve had long ago learned that he got this way when he was trying to say something he didn’t feel smart enough to do justice to. He had always talked about himself as if he wasn’t clever, compared himself to Steve and believed he came up wanting. If he hadn’t been so drunk, Steve would have been able to figure out how to steer this conversation back to something easier, lighter, but he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around what Bucky was telling him and what he should do about it.

“Do you really need me to spell it out for you?” Now he was just plain angry. He couldn’t even remember a time when Bucky’s anger had been directed at him his way.

“Isn’t that just--”

“Don’t you even say that. It’s not like that. I don’t mind. They get a little company, I get a nice night out, and just because I get some money doesn’t mean I’m selling myself. And it’s not like I’ve done it all that much. Just when we really needed help.”

“I thought you liked girls.” Steve wondered how many nights he’d believed Bucky had been out with girls that were in fact time he’d spent with those types of fellows. It would certainly explain why he’d given up trying to get Steve to double date with him all the time.

“I do like girls. I like them a _lot_.You can like both types of people.”

“Oh,” was all Steve could muster. His head was swimming, and it wasn’t just from booze.

With a fluid motion, Bucky knelt in front of him, his face close, and poked a finger into Steve’s chest. “I don’t even really have to like them, but usually I do. They don’t expect anything. They don’t ask a lot of questions. If I don’t like them, I just -- I just pretend I’m with you.”

It was like he’d been hollowed out inside, like all his bones and sorry excuse for muscles had evaporated into thin air. “Me?”

Bucky rocked back on his heels, then took Steve by the shoulders. “Oh my God, Steve. You are the dumbest fella on the planet. Just the stupidest. Do you really not understand what I’m trying to tell you?”

“No, I _don’t_!” He thought about one of the guys who modeled for their figure-drawing classes from time to time, a fellow one of the other students said was a queer, but that didn’t help him put into perspective what Bucky was saying. There had been more than a few times when Steve had wondered if he himself didn’t have a crush on Bucky, had tried to pretend it was just because they were so close and sometimes his hero-worship got the better of him. But that was just boy stuff, nothing like what Buck was saying to him now.

“I like boys too -- no, I like one boy in particular.” He poked Steve’s chest again. “And since you took your stupid pills today, I will tell you that that boy is you.”

Then Steve realized that Bucky hadn’t been looking at him with anger; he’d been staring at him with an intense longing, that he’d been trying to find a way to open himself up to Steve, risking their lifelong friendship for the sake of being honest about it. Steve didn’t know what touched him more: Bucky’s admission or his bravery in making it.

“So do you...you’ve kissed those guys, right? Kissing a fella wouldn’t be strange, then?”

That sideways grin returned, the one Steve had drawn so many times from memory. But instead of giving him a wisecrack in return, Bucky just leaned in and put his mouth on Steve’s, tenderly at first, then more firmly, pulling Steve closer to him. It wasn’t weird at all, really, it felt like when he put pencil to paper, a conviction flowing naturally from inside him to the surface. This was what he’d wanted without knowing he’d wanted it. Bucky pushed Steve’s mouth open with his own, slipped his tongue inside. Hot, tingling shocks swept through Steve’s body. He melted into Bucky, let him shape and re-form him, create someone new inside this once-familiar body. As whirls of desire coursed through him, he realized he was growing hard, shifted himself so Bucky wouldn’t notice.

When Bucky broke away and pulled his head back, he eyed Steve’s lips and said, “I always thought you might be a good kisser.”

Steve ducked his head, suddenly shy at being scrutinized this way, worried his body was betraying him. He’d heard Bucky jerking off sometimes at night in their tiny bedroom, and Bucky was probably amply aware of Steve doing the same; the room was minuscule and they were practically on top of each other already, you couldn’t avoid hearing the sharp, quickening breaths and the rustling of sheets, no matter how hard you tried to ignore it. But that hadn’t prepared him for this kind of intimacy. “I don’t know if it’s such a good idea to be out here doing this,” he said, staring down at his hands. Maybe he would feel less acutely awkward if they were on home turf.

“Yeah, I think if we’re gonna keep necking, we should go home.” Bucky waggled his eyebrows. “Because I want to keep necking.”

Steve hoped -- with a little bit of fear thrown in for good measure -- they were going to do a lot more than that. He let Bucky pull him by the sleeve out of the park, and they walked quietly back to the apartment. Every once in a while, Steve would glance over at him, and Bucky would meet his eyes, smirking or grinning.

As soon as they were inside, Bucky grabbed his shirt front and pulled him close for more kissing. Steve thought, _I could get used to this,_ while at the same time wondering if he _would_ get used to it.

If someone had stumbled upon the hundreds of sketches he’d made of Bucky over the years, they would have instantly known what Steve thought of him. But all the time spent looking at him, studying him, didn’t mean Steve had ever felt he had the right to hope for him in quite this way. Those moments were esoteric, a phantom desire for an unobtainable object.

“Do you know how this goes?” Bucky asked, his mouth shining and wet, his eyes glittering. From anyone else, that would have been condescending, but from Bucky it was just the way he always took care of Steve, forever trying to make things as easy on him as possible.

Steve shrugged and glanced sideways. “You’re the expert, apparently.”

“Ah, don’t be that way, Steve. It never meant anything.” He heeled off his shoes and undid his belt.

“I’m not...I’m sorry, Buck. I didn’t mean it that way, really I didn’t.” As Bucky stripped off his clothes, Steve stood frozen, only going so far as to take off his shoes. It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen Bucky unclothed, or never been unclothed in front of him, either, but this was so far outside the realm of normal he couldn’t really make sense of it. He couldn’t bear having Bucky see him this way, now, and be disappointed or change his mind.

Laughing, Bucky asked, “You gonna make me take your trousers off? You’re scrappy, I’ll give you that, but you’re still no match for me.” He moved toward Steve, but Steve stepped back.

“I just... Give me a minute, okay?” Oh, who was he kidding? It would take a lot more than a minute.

To Bucky’s great credit, he figured it out right away. “You think I won’t like I what I see all of a sudden? As if somehow this is going to change the way I look at you?” He put his hands around Steve’s waist, tilted his head, and looked down at him with such warmth it made Steve hitch up a breath. “You dumb goof. Don’t you know I think the sun rises and sets on you?”

Steve finally turned his eyes up to Bucky’s, and his throat tightened, positively ached with the longing. He shook his head, but moved close to let Bucky peel off his shirt and trousers, then stood shyly in just his undershirt and shorts. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Hey now. Cut it out,” Bucky said, and pulled Steve toward his bed, but then stopped and pushed their two twin beds together. “More room for hijinks.” He laughed again, but it helped Steve to see that Bucky was almost as nervous as he was.

“So like I said. Do you need to know about the...the details?” Bucky asked.

Steve had no idea why, but that made him bust out laughing. “I think I can figure it out.” His laughter apparently spread to Bucky, because he also erupted into a laughing fit. “Geez, what’s wrong with us?”

“I dunno. Too much to drink? Just maybe?” Bucky wiped a hand across his face.

“We shouldn’t have drunk so much if we were going to fool around.”

“I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t have had the courage to _actually fool around_ if we hadn't.” Bucky grinned at him.

How could that be? Steve wondered. Did he think Steve would reject him? Or just that he thought he was now damaged goods? Bucky had never been a nervous guy, worried about someone’s perception of him or about putting the moves on a gal.

_Oh. I'm not a gal. I'm not just someone._

He pulled Bucky toward him and kissed him again, before Bucky tugged him down onto the thin mattress, his hands roaming over Steve’s shoulders, his chest, his belly. “Can I show you something?” Steve asked, and Bucky’s eyebrows shot upward. “Not that. Jerk.” He kept thinking of Bucky telling him that the sun rose and set on him, that he wasn’t good enough for Steve, and he thought it was time Bucky understood something, too.

Steve dug around in his bottom dresser drawer, pulling out a couple of his old sketchpads. Sucking in a deep breath, he pulled the pages back to show Bucky one of the hundreds of sketches of him Steve had made over the years. Most were portraits from the chest up, but a few were full-body studies. The majority were just pencil or charcoal, but in the pastels, he’d intensified the deep blue of Bucky’s eyes, the shine of his dark hair. At first Bucky was silent as he flipped through the first book, but as Steve opened the second one, Bucky put his hand over Steve’s.

“You’ve been drawing these all this time? And you never let me see them? They’re...they’re amazing.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe you’ve done this. I can’t believe this is how you see me.”

“Don’t you know I think the sun rises and sets on _you?_ I always have, Buck.”

Bucky swallowed, shaking his head and laughing. “We’re a couple of big idiots, aren’t we? Come here,” he said with a low growl and pulled Steve to him, hooking his leg over Steve’s hip. They stayed that way a while, kissing, more and more intensely, until Bucky began grinding against him and Steve groaned in stunned pleasure.

Bucky pushed him onto his back, then moved his hand down into Steve’s shorts, making Steve gasp out loud; Bucky responded with a dirty chuckle. “Well, I gotta say one thing, Rogers -- you might have come out all scrawny and small in the rest of your body, but _this_ part turned out just fine.” He ran his hand up and down Steve’s cock as he kissed Steve’s throat, his chest, and then his belly, before pulling Steve’s shorts off.

“Oh my God, Buck. I didn’t--I don’t know if--” Suddenly Bucky’s mouth was on his dick. Steve nearly shot off the bed, would have except Bucky held his hips down. In his wildest fantasies of what sex might be like, he had never really imagined this. Certainly never gone so far as to imagine Bucky’s mouth on him, licking and sucking. He tried to glance down to see Bucky’s face, but all he seemed capable of doing was staring wide-eyed at the far wall, vaguely aware of the faint music on the radio, the sound Bucky’s mouth made on him, his own helpless moans. Within minutes, he came, groaning with both pleasure and embarrassment at how quickly it had happened.

But he didn’t have time to be ashamed, because Bucky made his way up Steve’s body again with kisses and nips, until he reached Steve’s mouth. He drew back and stared at Steve, putting his hand on his neck, stroking his thumb across Steve’s throat over and over. “Good, huh?’ he asked, his voice thick and...well, sultry, Steve thought. In one night, he’d found himself using words he’d never thought would become part of his vocabulary.

“I’ll say.” He waited for the tremors to subside before asking, “Can I do that for you? Is that what you’d like?”

“Yeah, yeah. You can do that if you like. But if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. I don’t want...well, I don’t want you to do anything that’ll give you trouble.” Typical Bucky -- always worrying about him. Sometimes Steve thought Bucky took better care of him than Steve did of himself. But then, how many times had Bucky sat there with him, rubbing his back and trying to help him breathe after an asthma attack? How many times had he sat next to Steve’s bed, helping him with homework, after he’d been out of school for days with another illness?

He touched the side of Bucky’s face. “I’d like to try.” Just picturing Bucky writhing beneath him caused pulses of silvery shivers to run up and down his spine.

Bucky grinned and lay back on the bed, letting Steve crouch over him and slide his shorts down, tangling his fingers in Steve’s hair. Bucky’s body was familiar and foreign, hard angles and soft contours, pale and dark. The hair on his chest feathered down a dark trail toward his hard cock, which lay against his belly, moving up and down along with the panting breaths Bucky took. Taking a deep breath, Steve put his hand around Bucky’s cock and then ran his tongue along it before taking the tip in his mouth. It was salty, musky, and that made him almost hard again.

He looked up to see Bucky bite down on the side of his hand, heard him gasp, “God, Steve, that feels so good.” Knowing he could make Bucky feel that way gave him a jolt of courage, so he commenced doing the same thing Bucky had done for him -- licking, sucking, squeezing with his hand. It seemed to work magic on him, Bucky kept muttering, “Yeah, Steve, Steve, yeah,” until his hips thrashed and he said in a voice thick and sweet as syrup, “Jesus, Steve, I’m sorry, I can’t control myself, oh God!” Steve pulled away as Bucky came, despite the fact that Bucky had a death grip on his hair. He was out of breath, unable to swallow the pulses, though he wasn’t going to let off the pressure and motion of his hand, either. Not when he could see what it did to Bucky.

When Bucky was spent, Steve slid up beside him and pulled his sticky hand off Bucky’s cock. They were both breathing shallowly, laughing shyly.

“Is this what it was like for you, on those other...dates?” Steve asked as Bucky put his arms around him and pulled him close, tucking Steve’s head under his chin.

“No, it was never like this. With anyone, ever. It’s different when it’s someone you love.”

****

“Wow,” Sam says, rubbing his mouth with his hand. Steve has finished telling him about how their friendship had changed before the war. He hasn’t told him all the details, but he has said enough to help Sam understand why this means so much. He needs to tell Sam all of it, even things he has kept private for so long. “So,” Sam adds, “he was more than just a friend to you.”

Steve has never really thought in those terms before -- of quantifying relationships, of more and less, friend or lover. “I don’t really think of it that way. I suppose most people categorize relationships, but I never really did. He was just everything to me -- my friend, first and foremost, whatever aspects that entailed.”

Sam gives him a little smile. “I guess that’s why you’re Captain America, man -- you’re just, like, the most enlightened guy ever.”

His cheeks grow hot and he drops his head. “Far from enlightened.” Sometimes it annoys him, the way people want to believe he’s somehow better than everyone else. “I have plenty of character flaws.”

Relaxing back onto the sofa, Sam takes a long pull from his beer. They’ve been up very late by this point, but it’s been such a long time since he’s had someone to confide in, that he could feel this at ease with, enough to tell his most important secrets to. Sam has no idea how often Steve thanks his lucky stars that he’d been out for a run that day, on the same route.

“So you say. Ain’t no one going to believe that, though.” He clicks off the TV that neither of them is watching anyway. “But I appreciate you telling me all this. I know how hard it must be to talk about.” He seems lost in thought for a moment. “This suggests a different way to find him, though, don’t you think? If he made the choice to save you, something’s in there, some piece of memory he’s holding on to. If he starts to remember, he might go back to those places -- that playground, that building, those streets. Something we can work with, at least, if you were that close.”

“I don’t know. Seeing that chair, reading those files and knowing what they’ve done to him, I wonder how far gone he really is. I thought I saw something in his eyes at the end there, something coming back to him. Who knows if, once he’s gone to ground, he can come back up. He’s had handlers, programmers, all these years. Now he has nothing.”

“Since when have you ever given up that easy? Shit, Steve. This guy was more than your friend, he was your lover, he knew a part of you no one else did.”

Categories again. But Bucky transcended categories, Steve thinks. Steve finishes his own beer off and sets the last of their sizable collection of empty bottles down on the end table. He may not be able to get drunk, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love a good beer. That was another great thing about modern times -- microbrews.

Sam leans forward, elbows on knees, and tilts his head. Steve’s seen that look before, when he is with the support group at the VA, but he doesn’t mind Sam using his techniques on him; in fact, he thinks it’s probably helped in more ways than he can really comprehend right now, with everything so mixed up in his head. “You know, all the stuff I read about you, and Barnes, they never said how you met.”

“Stuff you read?” Steve arches an eyebrow and grins at him.

“Well, of course. After they dug you out of the ice, I don’t think there was a magazine or newspaper wasn’t running a story about you and the Howling Commandos. It was a pretty good story, but now that I’ve gotten to know you, I can see how much spin they put on a lot of it.”

“Yeah, they always did.” He’s been thinking about that lately, about leveraging his fame and the discussion about Captain America as hero after the Insight disaster, but he’s still avoiding reporters -- the personal is so much more important to him right now. And with their security detail, it’s easy to hide. At some point, the NSA and the FBI will let him get back to normal -- or as close to it as possible -- but for now, the fellows in the dark suits and black SUVs are a comforting barrier between him and the media. He’s said what he needed to say for the time being. Anything more he wants to say is for Bucky.

“You know I was always sick when I was a kid, right?” Sam nods. “I’d seen Bucky around the neighborhood, even though I didn’t know him. I wasn’t in school a lot. And anyway, I never figured he’d be a friend; I didn’t have any friends in the first place, and even as a kid, Bucky was charming, he had all the adults wrapped around his finger, kids followed him around. A boy like that would never hang out with a kid like me. But...even before the Crash, we were poor, my mother and me. I always wanted to play at recess, but they kept me back so much of the time. So sometimes I’d sneak off to the park and get on the swings, climb on the slides or the jungle gym, all the stuff I wasn’t supposed to do.”

“Little Cap, rebel with a cause.” Sam laughs and shakes his head.

“My mother was always telling me that I shouldn’t swing too high. Said it over and over. ‘Don’t swing too high, you’ll hurt yourself.’ Of course one day I ignored her, kept going higher and higher on the swing. I think I was about six, seven maybe? And lost my grip and went sailing, landing on my hands and knees. I was a bloody mess, there was sand and dirt in the places where I’d torn my skin off. I tried hard not to cry, but the tears came anyway, because it hurt like hell and I was terrified of going home and my ma seeing what a mess I was, knowing how angry she would be. Some of the other boys started picking on me, knocking me around, and I wasn’t in any condition to fight back, so I was taking my licks. But just when I thought I wasn’t going to get out of that, along came James Buchanan Barnes to my rescue.”

“Kids like that, the charming ones, the popular ones, they’re usually the type to do the beat-downs.”

“I know. I thought at first he was going to hit me, too. But he waded in and started knocking heads, saying something that he would say many, many times for the rest of our lives: go pick on someone your own size. As I got to know him, I saw where that came from. His dad wasn’t what you’d call abusive, but he had a temper, and like a lot of men in that neighborhood, drank -- Prohibition did nothing to stop people who really wanted to drink. He’d blow a lot of his paycheck every week, usually Friday night, and if something Bucky did or said rubbed him the wrong way, out came the hand. Buck just did not like seeing anyone get knocked around. So he helped me home and told me he’d wait till Ma came home, and he’d tell her it was his fault.”

Sam’s thoughtful for a while, assessing all that, and then says, “You idolized him, but it never occurred to you that he idolized you too.”

Steve starts to demur, to deny that Bucky could have idolized him, but he realizes that yeah, it’s the truth. He’d seen it when he went to the Smithsonian that day, watched Bucky’s face in the old films that played throughout the exhibit. Sometimes, when he was in the background and unaware the camera was on him, Bucky would look at Steve with such love that it crushed Steve’s heart; he’d seen the same thing in the much rarer shots of Peggy, as well. He’d loved two extraordinary people, but it had been almost impossible for him to accept they had loved him in return until he’d been confronted with the evidence. “You can see why this is so hard for me. To know he doesn’t remember.”

“You loved someone who went on to live their life without you, who has trouble remembering you sometimes now, and you loved someone else you thought had died, and who doesn’t remember you. That’s...man, that’s a heavy, heavy load. You said you didn’t know what would make you happy, but seeing the way you look when you talk about him, helping him would be a good start toward figuring that out. ”

Once again, Steve is amazed by his perspicacity. Sam’s managed to turn Steve’s sense of despair at the task of saving Bucky completely around, and now Steve’s ready to regroup and go at it again. He smiles approvingly. “I see what you did there.”

That earns him the biggest grin he’s ever seen on Sam. “They schooled me well.”

Sam gets up and corrals all the beer bottles to take to the kitchen. “So, Brooklyn.”

“Yeah, Brooklyn. I don’t know if he’ll be drawn back there, but we can see. Maybe we can pay a visit to Stark while we’re in New York. You should meet him.”

“He ever going to return the wing schematics? Or do you think he’s trying to build a better set?”

Steve shrugs and gets up to head to bed. As much as he enjoys staying with Sam, having someone to talk to, he can’t wait till he can settle someplace again, pick up the things from his apartment -- which he is never going back to live in, after everything that had happened -- and get back on mission. Peggy would have told him, back during the war, that he “must crack on,” and there’s a certain appeal to treading water here with Sam, slowly picking up the pieces, but he needs to focus again.

Sam is one of the best listeners he’s ever met; Steve had never thought he had so much to say until Sam started eking it out of him, bit by bit. At the bedroom door he looks over his shoulder and says, “Sam. Your friendship has meant a lot to me. I hope you know that.”

Sam nods, then says, “You know, it took me a long time, with Riley. I was so stuck in my own grief, I couldn’t really see any future. It took me a long time to see that I didn’t want to let go of that, because I thought to let go of it, to not feel that pain every moment, was like letting go of him, forgetting him. I didn’t want to forget him and what he meant to me.”

Steve gets what he’s saying. He nods in thanks, and closes the door.

His biggest worry is that if Bucky doesn’t want to be found, all their resources wouldn’t even matter. He puts on a worn t-shirt, pajama pants, and slips into bed, lost again in the sea of his confusion at what Bucky’s become.

With Sam, Steve can concentrate on the action, keep focus. He has a friend, he has someone he can trust and who can guide him. But when he’s by himself, he’s as lost as he was when he first came back. There is nothing for him to put his back up against anymore, no clear enemy. He’s not alone anymore, and the people who meant more to him than anyone else are alive and in this world, but Steve is lonelier than ever. Hope is the thinnest of threads for him now, something it would take only the weakest pull to break.

When he’d awakened and found out where he was, he’d looked into retrieving what he had left at home, believing that someone must have kept something of his early life. But the landlady had thrown everything out, unaware that her previous renter had become famous, and Steve had left home almost immediately after the change, believing he’d go back there eventually. There were a few things salvaged from the USO tour, and of course his compass with Peggy’s picture, but none of the thousands of sketches he’d made, his family belongings, or Bucky’s letters home had survived. It’s the letters he misses the most, the mementos he wishes the hardest for.

Bucky had always thought he wasn’t as smart as Steve, but Steve had known that to be untrue. He had a way with a phrase, he was a keen observer of other people, and he was just plain funny -- capable of making Steve laugh even in the worst of times. There had been only a handful of letters before Steve was off on tour and then to Europe himself, but he’d cherished every one, read them so often the already-thin paper became transparent and torn as he memorized parts of them. So much Bucky had written had been forgotten, though, in time’s wake.

But he remembers the letter Bucky had written first, while on the troop ship over to England, describing how crowded and disgusting it was, how surprised he’d been that he hadn’t got seasick himself. “The strangest thing was hearing music one night shortly after we left port. There was an improbable phonograph on board, and we ended up having an all-male dance that night. That was something I never thought I’d see.” _Improbable phonograph_ had been such a perfect Bucky phrase.

Bucky had carefully addressed his letters to S. Rogers and not used a greeting, so that when censors read them, it wouldn’t be apparent they were to a man. He often waxed poetic about the things he saw on ship or in England, or told Steve how much he missed him, reminisced about their childhood. It was a part of the last letter he remembers most clearly, all these decades down the road:

“I know how hard it is, to feel you’ve been left behind and can’t do your part. You are the best of what people can be, your compassion and generosity and strength are what I carry with me every day here, and hope that I can be half as good as you, half as brave. I wake up every morning thinking of you, and go to sleep the same way every night. Even if I don’t make it back, I’ll have lived a life with you in it, and who could ask for more?”

He’d wondered, at the time, if Bucky had been _convinced_ he might never come back. Now he thinks of what Sam said, that Bucky had idolized him; thinks that maybe keeping a part of Steve alive within himself is what helped him survive the torture back then, and the despair of his captivity as the Winter Soldier. Even if he didn’t know he had it, maybe that has helped him.

Bucky could never give up on Steve, so he can’t give up on Bucky.

And Sam’s right. Steve Rogers has never backed down from anything before. Bucky might not know he needs Steve, but he does. _I just have to prove that to him._

 

Things bleed through.

The conditioning only holds so long. It’s unstable under pressure. He had handlers for that.

Sometimes he can’t hear over the clanging din inside his mind; other times it’s empty. He was made for one purpose, he knows now, and without that purpose he is nothing. But he can’t tell which is worse -- the noise or the lack of it. This is what it’s like to have no memories of your own, no identity. He holds on to only the things he can name at this fixed point in time.

One moment that bleeds through is the first time he saw the man, Steve Rogers. He chased him across rooftops, through buildings. The soldier thinks maybe that’s where he should go. Retrace his route and see if he can find fragments left behind.

He shouldn’t remember where it is, but like everything these past few days, pieces of the old past and the new past coalesce in his mind. He finds the location, watching from a roof across the way. There are government agents there somewhere; he can smell them. A board covers the window Rogers broke chasing him, and holes pock the outside wall, crime tape crisscrossed over them.

He recalls it now: Rogers throws the red and blue shield at him, he catches it, throws it back. Jumps off the roof. Then they wanted to put him on ice again, but the old man said, “Wait.” He’s good at waiting, so he stays on the roof, watching.

When it’s time, he starts over to the building, saying out loud, “Switching to dark approach.” He moves to turn off his comms, but there’s no earbud, no microphone, no one on the other end to tell of his actions. He can’t remember a time when he wasn’t supposed to report his choices. How long will it take for him to get used to this? Everything is a dark approach now, he is silent not because it helps the mission, but because he has no one to communicate with.

He should feel free now, but instead he’s just trying to find some way through a long tunnel with no endpoint and too many branching paths to choose from.

It’s easy enough to remove the board over the window. Silently he slips into the apartment, pulls the blinds down. He’ll replace the board before dawn. Someone’s cleaned up the crime scene, but the tape is still up.

He clears all the rooms and hallways first, then sits down in the living room. He doesn’t know what he expected, but the apartment doesn’t provide a sense of who lives here at all. The old man -- Pierce, he has to remind himself -- had a place that seemed like it belonged to him, but this doesn’t feel like it belongs to anyone. There are some pictures here and there, a lot of books and old records, but nothing that says this is someplace that Steve Rogers lives.

Not that he knows, right now, what Steve Rogers is really like. Does Rogers not belong here any more than he does? They are both men out of time, forced to live in a world they never really asked to. Made to be weapons.

Yet he feels like he knows this place. It makes the hair stand up on the back of his neck, but it’s like...like he’s lived here. Or he can see it through someone else’s eyes. Usually he can assess a target in an instant, but this man eludes him. Maybe that’s the problem, maybe he should stop thinking of Rogers as a target, and instead think of him as the friend he once was.

So, what would a friend do in another’s home? He goes to the refrigerator, finds only a few things that don’t require cooking, something he can’t do without calling attention to the fact that he’s here. Opens cupboards to see what’s inside. This isn’t a kitchen where someone cooks a lot; it’s not a place where someone has guests. On the refrigerator there are some postcards, but nothing written on the backs of them; Rogers must have bought them on his travels, rather than receiving them from someone. For some reason, that gives him an ache in his throat.

He takes a few energy bars and a protein shake from the refrigerator, and sits down next to a bookcase to eat. None of the book titles interest him until he lights on one of a handful that are about Captain America. With each page he leafs through, he finds himself more and more engaged, but unlike the exhibit, this isn’t overpowering, it doesn’t topple him into sensory overload.

There are very few pictures in the book of Rogers as a boy, but more than a few of him as a scrawny, solemn, frail young man, especially once he joined the army. It had taken the soldier a long time to grasp, seeing the photos at the exhibit, that they’d deliberately turned Rogers into what he was when they faced off. They had changed him physically, but not mentally. The soldier wants to know if that means he was this way before, too. The photos couldn’t have told him that; only Rogers can.

He flips past the chapters on the first few months of Rogers as the supersoldier, until he hits a section about himself. There’s a picture of Rogers surrounded by a number of soldiers, and next to him is Barnes. “Me,” he says, trying out the word.

Rogers’s face is turned toward Barnes’s, and they’re smiling at each other. _We’re smiling at each other._ It’s a look of such pure devotion that it makes him feel sick. He puts down the food and closes the book. Getting up to look around the room, take a break from this trip down a memory lane he doesn’t remember walking, he pulls out some DVDs, all of them a variation on Captain America’s story. One has a sticky note on top that says, “This is hands-down the worst of the bunch. Don’t watch it alone! It might actually kill you. Call me when you want to see it and I’ll bring mind-altering substances. --Clint”

So he has new friends now, even if no one sends him postcards. That pleases the soldier, though he’s not certain why he would care. After some more examination of the items on the shelves, he returns to the book, flips through the rest of the pages. A small voice tells him that he shouldn’t read any of the quotations about himself. Then he spots a picture with a woman who’s identified as Peggy Carter. She’s standing with Rogers, both of them in Army uniforms -- he’s not wearing the Captain America gear -- and they’re looking at each other in the foreground, a lot of other people in the background who don’t seem to notice them. Or they’re not noticing anyone else, he’s not sure, it’s just the way they’re staring at each other. There’s a jolt of recognition in the back of his brain, zapping him like a taser, and he flips back to the picture of Barnes -- himself -- and Rogers he’d seen before.

They’re looking at each other the same way. In both photos, they are people in love.

He runs his hand through his hair, staring off in the middle distance. It’s one thing to know you had a friend, you were a friend to someone, but it becomes larger than he can comprehend to think he was in love and someone was in love with him. He was Bucky, and Steve Rogers loved Bucky, the same way he loved Peggy Carter.

What had he done to be worthy of that?

Not wearing this dark soul. Not murdering hundreds of people. Not being a monster.

Sharp, crushing pain presses up behind his eyes, pounds in his head along with the echoing, metallic screech. He puts the book down and stumbles into the bedroom. Everything here looks as nondescript as everything else, but there are some large paper pads on the nightstand. He flips through them -- pencil sketches of landscapes, people. A number of drawings of Peggy Carter, young and then old. And then himself. Picture after picture of his face, young and open and happy. How could he ever have been that man?

He sets the pad down on the bed and curls up beside it. The sheets have a human scent, warm and musky. There are some clothes tossed on the side of the bed, as if Rogers had hurriedly changed. He pulls the t-shirt to his face, inhaling the scent of this man who was his friend, who loved him, hoping it might bring back some glittering shard of memory, an identity that recognizes the smell.

For a while he stays that way, his metal fingers tracing the swirls of pencil on the sketchpad, his real hand clutching the shirt, until he falls asleep on Rogers’s bed.

Through the night he dreams: he’s on a merry-go-round that spins faster and faster, and then he’s suddenly slipping off the side, falling into a deep, icy canyon. Then he’s reaching for a hand, and Steve shouts his name, but he simply falls and falls and falls.

A short while later he wakes to a blood-red sky. Startled, he looks around wildly; he’s forgotten where he is until he remembers the shirt in his hand, and he leaps backward off the bed. He has to get out before there’s too much light. But he stops before leaving, turns back, and pulls one of the sketches of himself off the pad, stuffing it into his pocket.

This new life terrifies him, but what he’s lived can’t be life. So he’ll do what he knows: destroy everything and wipe all traces of himself away.

Maybe Rogers will know how to rebuild him.


	2. Déjà Visité

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve is kind of folding in on himself, an origami sculpture of humiliation.

Sam is in the kitchen when Steve comes out of the guest bedroom, looking spiky and as ragged as the threadbare t-shirt he wears to bed. 

“Can’t sleep?” Sam asks, glancing at the microwave clock, which reads 1:12. Steve shakes his head. “Me neither.”

Steve sits on the stool and leans his arms on the counter. “Midnight snack?”

“My mama always made me a grilled cheese sandwich whenever I was down, or sick, or just needed a little comfort food. Usually with tomato soup, too, but I’m out of that.” He flips the sandwich in the skillet, glances back over his shoulder, and asks, “Want one?”

“That sounds really good. Thanks.” 

“Any time. Why don’t you get yourself something to drink?” He knows Steve has struggled to sleep at night, ever since they saw that chair they put Barnes in. Hears him pacing around the apartment sometimes, but Sam pretends he doesn’t because he knows the last thing Steve needs is him in his grill again. It takes time to process all this stuff. And as freaking weird as it all is, it’s still nothing he hasn’t seen before in some form or another, so he knows when to push and when to leave it alone.

He throws the sandwich onto a plate and starts a second one, while Steve gets up and pads past him to get a glass and open the refrigerator. His kitchen is small, what his mama always referred to as a one-butt kitchen and right now there are two butts in it, neither of them particularly small. Steve is right behind him for a few exhilarating seconds, warm, close, and Sam is acutely aware of a tingling in his lower belly, racing down into his groin. It’s one thing to know that Steve’s metabolism runs high, but it’s another to have him right behind you, a walking _furnace_. 

Steve grabs the milk and pours a glass, holds the carton out toward Sam and raises his eyebrows in a question, so Sam says, “Yeah, pour me some too.” What he really needs is some ice water and a cold shower, but he damn sure isn’t going to say that. There’s awkward, and then there’s _awkward_.

A sweaty flush rises up his neck, into his face, as Steve puts the carton back in the fridge and glides past him. Except he doesn’t really go all the way past. He sets the glasses down next to the stove, planting himself right behind Sam. The spatula hovers in midair, as if Sam isn’t the one holding this foreign object; he stares at it like it’s just sprouted there in his hand while he wasn’t looking.

Steve moves forward a half-step so his body nudges up against Sam’s. His hand closes around Sam’s forearm, and then slides along Sam’s arm as his mouth hovers about an inch away from the nape of Sam’s neck. The heat of Steve’s skin, the deep masculine scent of him -- peppery and woodsy, what _is_ that, Sam wonders, because it makes him want to lick the guy -- sends Sam’s dick twitching. He can feel Steve’s dick through their thin pajama bottoms, not hard yet but getting there. One hand keeps ranging over Sam’s shoulder, the top of his chest, to his collarbone, his thumb rubbing Sam’s spine, then down, up again. 

It would be a lie to say he hasn’t fantasized about this. But he’s got no illusions about Steve’s feelings, what picture the two of them could paint, so he has shoved it aside as something not to consider further. But now Sam’s considering it, boy freaking howdy is he considering it. He sets the skillet to one side of the stove and turns off the element.

Sam leans his head back against Steve’s shoulder, taking in the power of those strong fingers closing around his neck, his chin. He turns his face to the side and Steve leans forward, kissing him. Though his mouth is scalding it’s like drinking sweet tea, and he pushes Sam’s mouth open with his tongue, sliding it inside. Kissing Steve reminds Sam of the first time he tried the wings, the dizzying knowledge that he had taken flight before he was careening down, earth whirling underneath him as he pirouetted through blue sky. Eventually Steve steals his mouth away and turns Sam around to face him. Sam opens his eyes as if waking from a perfect dream, but _huh,_ there it is, still a dream.

It looks as if Steve’s going to say something; instead he clutches the back of Sam’s head with one hand, tugs him hard with the other hand, digging fingers into Sam’s hip as he kisses him again. He grapples with uncertain fingers at Steve’s waist, his shoulders, his arms; he doesn’t know what to do with his hands but they’re burning, they’re positively on fire just like the rest of him. There is so much power coiled in Steve and he’s loosing it on Sam and Sam just wants as much of it as he can get. He doesn’t even know if all this fire comes just from Steve or he’s contributing to it, and fuck it, who cares.

When Steve pulls away from the kiss his lips are as glossy and red as an apple, his eyes glittering like sun on water. So quickly that Sam gasps, Steve grabs him and slams him up against the far wall, throwing himself against Sam and grinding his hips into him. His dick is as hard as Sam’s and Sam moans against Steve’s panting mouth. “Jesus, Steve, Jesus Christ.” Steve’s fingers are bunching Sam’s t-shirt in his fist, he’s pushing it up his chest while Sam’s trying to yank Steve’s off at the same time. When they finally get the shirts off they both step back, as though they’re each startled they’ve arrived at this point.

Sam clenches fingers over Steve’s hips, trying to still him. Not that he particularly wants Steve to reconsider all of this, but he wants the decisions to be clear. He’s all about clarity. “Steve,” he says, his voice sounding thick in his ears, “I ain’t some blushing schoolboy. Got no illusions about where your heart is, what you want. You don’t have to worry about me, my eyes are open.”

Steve nods, scrapes his fingernails down Sam’s chest, as Sam shudders. “Have you ever been with a fellow?” he asks, like he’s asking someone if they’ve ever tried sushi or how about those Mets.

Sam laughs at Steve’s attempt at nonchalance. “Can’t say I have. But that doesn’t mean I’m not all in for this.” And isn’t that a fizzy little thought, that Captain America Steve Rogers is more experienced on this side of the street than 21st-century-guy Sam Wilson.

“Good to know.” Steve grabs both his wrists and hauls his arms up above his head, pins him, squirming, to the wall with his body, dragonfly on a pinboard. He kisses him so hard Sam thinks he might end up with a bloody lip. Sam nips at Steve’s mouth, his neck, his shoulder, and Steve meets each one with a grunt, grinding his dick in little circles of rutting abandon against Sam’s. If they don’t get off the wall soon, Sam’s going to come in his pajamas right here, and he wants more than that. So. Much. More. But Steve’s got him fixed here and there’s no moving a supersoldier if he doesn’t want to be moved. 

We tell ourselves so many stories, he thinks as Steve’s mouth explores his neck and shoulders, but there’s really only ever been this one: the need to connect, to _be_ with someone and know their touch, desire, passion. Steve is so hungry for touch and closeness he’s starving. There’s nothing Sam wants more in this world than to give this to him. Tell him a story through lips, hands, bodies.

Sam finally slips one hand free and slides it into Steve’s pants, grabbing his dick hard, and Steve’s breath catches in his throat; his eyes go hilariously wide. He bites Sam’s neck, he’d call it a love bite except that it’s not that delicate, and Sam rasps out, “Oh, shit.” Breathes hard, grins, and then says, “I’m gonna come right here if we don’t slow this down and get in the bedroom.” Pulling his head back, Steve eyeballs him and grins back, then lets go of Sam’s wrist. He doesn’t move away, though, and Sam thinks his skin is going to melt right off from Steve’s incendiary heat.

“I just want to be sure you’re sure. I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize this friendship, it means too much to me.”

Why, why, why is Steve still talking? “Like I said, my eyes are open. You’re always gonna be my friend. Nothing will change that.” 

“Okay.” Takes a deep breath. “Okay. I just didn’t want to as--”

Sam squeezes Steve’s dick, runs his thumb over the head until Steve _finally_ stops talking and shudders. “Steve, man, just shut up and fuck me.”

Like the well-trained soldier he is, Steve says, “Sir, yes sir,” and obeys.

 

In the morning, they’re awakened to shouting and a dull engine’s roar outside Sam’s place. Steve uncurls from around Sam and they look at each other, sleepy-eyed. He’s sticky in places he never imagined being sticky, bruised and raw, and more content than he’s been in a damn long time. Sam mutters, “What the hell?” The roaring gets louder above the din of men yelling, and then Steve grins. 

“I know that sound -- it’s a repulsor.”

They pull on jeans and t-shirts and run out barefoot to find their security detail with guns trained on a hovering Tony Stark in his Iron Man suit. Which is asinine, of course, but Sam supposes they have to do their jobs. 

“You wanna call off your mutts, Cap?” Tony says, and Steve smiles at him, serene, happy. The way Steve’s looking at Stark lifts Sam’s heart a little.

So Steve asks them to lower their guns, but one of them says, in that voice you use for little kids when you’re out in public and they’re running around the restaurant like maniacs, “Captain Rogers, he hasn’t been vetted.”

“I know,” Steve says sympathetically, “but come on. He could have obliterated you from a half-mile out.”

They all glance at each other, then finally lower their weapons with a shrug. It’s all pretty much theatre really, anyway, they’ve got to convince Hydra that Cap is being looked after. Tony lands with a metallic clunk and raises his face mask. Sam notices then that he’s carrying a couple of boxes behind him in some sort of giant metal Iron Man backpack, and...Steve’s shield.

Tony tosses him the shield, saying, “Thought you might want this.” It’s muddy and the leather straps are stiff from the water, but Steve’s clearly so happy to see it that he looks like he might cry. “They’ve got me and Rhodey doing some salvage work on the Potomac. Everyone’s a critic, I know, but holy shit, did you guys do some damage. I’ll have to take some of this out of Hill’s paycheck.”

“Thank you, Tony,” Steve says, hefting his shield, and motions toward him. “This is Sam Wilson.” Sam reaches out to shake Tony’s hand, wondering if the fingers will crush his. But it just feels like shaking the hand of someone wearing thin metal gloves. Which, he supposes, is weird enough as it is.

“Pleasure to meet you.”

“The bird man. I have a present for you, too.” He sets the large box at Sam’s feet. “Take ’em out for a test drive, do some loop-de-loops, barrel rolls, crazy Ivans, whatever it is you guys do, see how they feel -- and if there’s anything that needs adjusting, we can do that when you come up to New York.” Then he claps Sam on the shoulder and that definitely hurts.

“Say hey to Colonel Rhodes for me,” Sam says and grins, picking up the wing pack.

“You know him? He didn’t tell me that.” He narrows his eyes. “Are you kidding me? He was part of this EXO-7 program?”

Sam can’t help the laughter that erupts as both Steve and Tony glare at him. “Yeah, yeah, he was. Who do you think caught us when we fell those first few times, trying to learn how to fly?”

“Oh, there are going to be words he’s not--”

Steve shakes his head at him and interrupts. “You know, Tony, I wasn’t expecting you to actually _build_ the things. You didn’t have to do that. You’ve had enough on your mind lately.” Steve’s told Sam about Tony’s PTSD after the battle in New York -- the late-night phone calls, the unexpected visits, everything that happened with Pepper. 

Tony brushes him off. “As if I wouldn’t take up the challenge. It was fun, anyway. I cannot have other people building cooler things than me.” Then he gives Steve a serious look and adds, “I’m so sorry about everything that happened. Especially about your friend. And that I wasn’t here to help you. ”

“You would have been here if you could. Honestly, I never even had time to call in reinforcements.” Steve seems to pointedly avoid saying anything about Barnes; Sam wonders how much he trusts Stark, or if it’s just that he knows Stark will be dead-set against Steve doing exactly the sort of thing he’s doing. Steve’s acutely aware that everyone wishes he wouldn’t go after Barnes; Sam’s pretty sure that makes him dig in his heels even harder. As good a guy as Steve is, he has a stubborn streak that borders on self-destruction.

Tony hands Steve the smallest container and fishes out what looks like...a pink cake box. “Courtesy of Pepper. She was so upset about everything with SHIELD that she started baking, which I had no idea was one of her stress-relieving strategies. You think you know someone. She said you loved the macarons at some chi-chi French bakery she took you to, so she made some herself, just for you.” Steve takes the box with a big, doofy grin on his face. He hasn’t seemed this boyish since the first time they met, before everything in his world fell apart. “Sorry I didn’t bring them in last night, but we wanted to get in there and assess things first.”

“You’re a brick,” Steve says. “So how bad is it? Are you...”

“Yeah. It’s pretty grim, no sugar-coating. Rhodey and I are trying to cut through some of the heaviest debris, see what we can find before the salvage crews do their thing. It’s tiring work. I’m very tired.” He pouts.

“Awww,” Steve says with chummy fake sympathy and puts his arm around Tony’s shoulders.

Tony rests his cheek against Steve’s chest and says, “Can I just pillow my head for a while on your magnificent pecs? That’ll give me the hope to carry on.” Steve sputters but pulls Tony closer. Sam is absolutely soaring watching this. For the first time the despair and weariness that always hide at the corners of his eyes completely melt away.

Tony rubs Steve’s stomach, steps away. Then he gets a look on his face: a kid who’s just discovered his parents’ secret stash of porn. He glances at Sam, then at Steve, then back to Sam. “Wait a minute.” Only then does Sam realize they’re both barefoot, wearing the same type of jeans, and almost the exact same goddamn t-shirt, looking the very picture of a couple who woke up together. “Are you...are you rogering Rogers? I knew you were staying here, Steve, but I didn’t realize you were _staying here_.”

“Tony!” Steve shouts, and he’s positively crimson from his v-neck to his hairline. “You can’t just say--”

“No, no! This is _fantastic._ Jesus Christ, Steve, you’ve been a tourist in the Land of People Who Know How to Have Fun for way too long. It’s time for full citizenship. Go you,” he says cheerfully, and then turns to high-five Sam. “Wait till I tell Pepper!”

Sam’s never been congratulated for being fucked before. Steve is kind of folding in on himself, an origami sculpture of humiliation.

He’d thought flying with wings was pretty surreal when he joined the EXO program, but this is a completely separate level of reality. Tony just keeps grinning, but he drops the face mask, powers up, and says, “You’re the cream in my coffee, Rogers.” 

He points at Sam. “Test those wings. And then come fly with me.” But he stops about ten feet off the ground, hovering. “Steve, come back to New York. There’s space for you, and there’s no reason for you to station yourself here anymore. Come home. At the very least, it’ll get Pepper off my ass.”

“We’re heading to Brooklyn today or tomorrow anyway. I’ll stop by, take a look.” He waves, and Tony’s off like a rocket.

So this is my life now, Sam thinks as he watches Tony Stark zoom off into the bright blue sky. I’m running missions with Black Widow, sleeping with Captain America, and hanging out with Iron Man. Pepper Potts is baking us fancy French cookies. It just doesn’t get any weirder than this. _Or better._

Back in the apartment, Steve gathers up fixings for omelets. Sam opens the pink box and looks inside. “Are you freaking kidding me.”

“What?” Steve asks, alarmed, like maybe there are deadly snakes or an explosive device in the box, so Sam turns it toward him. The entire top layer of macarons each have a bite taken out of them. On the inside top, scrawled in typical engineer block capitals, is “I had to make sure they weren’t poisoned.”

Steve busts out laughing but the most Sam can muster is a tolerant, thin smile. “Is Pepper in the habit of poisoning people?”

Steve cracks eggs into a bowl, shaking his head. “Tony’s just a...a dick. You get used to it. You think you won’t, but you do.”

“Good thing he’s charming.” Sam pokes through the cookies to find the unbitten ones. “Although I’m probably the thousandth person to have to say that.”

As Steve pours the eggs into a pan, he gets a wistful look on his face. “It took me a while to realize he was kind of like Bucky in that regard. He’d have no problem with pulling some prank on me or embarrassing me, but God forbid anyone else ever did it. He’d beat them to a pulp.” He waves a hand in the air. “That’s Tony.” He points at the coffeemaker, so Sam gets up to put some on.

They’re quiet for a long time until Steve, focused on his cooking, says, “Hey, about--” Regret tints his voice.

“Aw no, no, no. Hell no. Not the _about last night_ speech. I thought we talked this out, Steve.” Sam rubs his eyes, something he’s doing a lot of lately.

Steve turns to him, dismayed. “No, I was going to say, about this morning -- I’d hoped to wake up a little differently.” He flips the omelets onto plates and turns off the stove, hands Sam a fork.

“Oh. Like, different how?” Steve’s cooking repertoire is pretty limited, but damn if he doesn’t make a superb ham and cheese omelet. Sam spears a chunk and raises his eyebrows as he pops it into his mouth.

“Like, a little more...horizontally.” The tips of his ears turn red, which Sam finds crushingly endearing. As though Steve has no problem coming on to someone, but when he has to actually speak the words, he gets all shy and awkward, looks down and toes the floor. Steve had told him that after word got out he was back, folks were always asking to have their pictures taken with him or get an autograph. Women often kissed him while doing that, sometimes full on the mouth, and more than a few guys had too. Practically his whole body blushed when he talked about it, and Sam had wondered if deep down, Steve had never fully accepted who he had become. 

Around a mouthful of omelet, Sam says, “I think that can be arranged. Let me finish this so I have enough energy to keep up with you.” He puts his music on and cues up _Bring It On Home to Me_. “Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Sam Cooke.”

 

Before they take off, Steve wants to stop by his apartment and pick up a few things. It’s strange, living this vagabond life, attempting to feel settled and yet not belonging anywhere. Tony had said, “Come home,” and that was the first time Steve had found himself considering just what home could mean to him. He’d lived in one place for so long, and then his life had been abruptly altered in every possible respect, and he never saw a home again. Maybe, though, with these people, these _friends,_ he can finally figure out what that means to him. And if he can figure that out, he can explain it to Bucky.

There’s still crime scene tape up, and the landlord has obviously not been allowed to repair the outer wall or the window. But there’s a prickly, cold sensation scratching at the base of his skull, telling him that someone’s been here. Nothing is out of place, nothing is different, but...Bucky’s been here. Steve just knows this. 

Sam asks, “What is it?”

“He’s been here. Bucky.” He scans the room, searching for a concrete clue.

“What, is this your spidey sense tingling or something?”

“My what?”

“Your spidey sense. It’s a comi-- Never mind. All the cops and agent types crawling around here, how could you possible tell that one guy in particular has been here? I mean, come on.”

“I just do.” Steve shrugs. “I don’t know if it’s from the serum or what, but I can sense things sometimes. Like my awareness is heightened. Gabe used to make fun of me about that, too. But he stopped after I’d knocked a few hidden Germans out of trees or off the roofs of buildings.”

“He the brother in the Howling Commandos?”

“If by brother you mean African American man, then yes.” 

Sam laughs, and Steve can’t tell if it’s at him or with him. Just when he thinks he’s doing an adequate job of mining all the new lingo around him, something comes along to remind him how hopeless this task feels. He’ll never be caught up.

He looks around the kitchen -- opens the icebox and recalls that there were two more protein shakes in there before. Checks the cupboard and finds all the energy bars gone. “He was hungry. But he knew not to touch anything he’d have to cook.” Can Bucky even take care of himself outside the control of his handlers? What would they have implanted in his mind? Bucky had been so proud, never left the house without looking his best, spent whatever meager bit of income he had left over on what helped him achieve that. Now Steve imagines him hungry, hurt, confused. Hears him screaming “No, I don’t!” when Steve said he knew him. It was the bellow of an angry child, confronted with a reality he couldn’t accept and had no ability to understand.

Sam raises his eyebrows, but says nothing. He’s getting concerned again, but trying to give Steve some space. “Why would he come here? Wouldn’t that be risky, considering what he did here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe...maybe he remembers being here, me chasing him. Maybe he’s trying to put together the pieces of what happened to him recently. If he doesn’t remember being here, it wouldn’t have been hard for him to find out where I’d lived, especially since he’s already been to Pierce’s.” That visit hadn’t been hard for them to figure out at all -- the pulverized safe alone was the calling card from his metal arm.

He moves to the bedroom and now he knows with absolute certainty Bucky’s been here. The bed has been smoothed, but there’s still just enough mussing of the covers to tell someone was lying there. And his sketchpads have been moved. He opens the top one, flips through the pages, and -- there it is, a page torn out. Looks through a few more pages, mostly jots of his memories of what midtown looked like in the thirties, a few of Peggy, many more of Bucky, and then realizes which one is missing. Steve sits down hard on the bed. 

“What is it?” Sam asks, his voice gentle, like he’s dealing with one of his vets.

“He took one of the sketches.” He runs a shaking hand through his hair. “When we were young, Bucky was always trying to get a rise out of me, doing stuff to embarrass or shock me. Just kid stuff, you know, the way boys are. One time he carved a heart with our initials on a tree, said that way there’d be something of us left after we were gone. I was so embarrassed, because that was the tree a lot of sweethearts carved their initials on. I kept demanding he stop, but he just laughed and kept carving. No one was around, but I still got freaked out.”

“You drew that tree?”

“Yeah. I think there were some other things on the page...maybe something from the neighborhood, and maybe a quick sketch of him the way I remembered him as a boy. I usually draw two or three things on a page, I guess I still haven’t gotten out of the habit. Drawing paper was such a precious resource when I was young.”

“Maybe it rang a bell.”

“Maybe.” 

“Is that tree still there?”

“No, it’s long gone. Like almost everything in our neighborhood.” There had been so few places and things left behind when he went back, but he’d never stopped trying to find what little he could. Until they’d stationed him down here to run operations out of the Triskelion, something that kept him busy enough that he couldn’t dwell on the longing for his past.

He stands up. “Sam, I need to come back here. Just for a little while. Alone.”

“Hell no. That is the absolute worst idea you’ve had yet. It’s just way too dangerous.” Sam’s eyes are lit up like firecrackers. “It’s one thing for us to go searching for him, but if the hunted is doing the hunting now...we don’t know what kind of mental state he’s in right now, and in case you haven’t looked around lately, there’s nobody on our side except a couple of babysitters who aren’t much of a match against a super assassin.”

“Having someone else around might spook him. I know how to handle it now. I know what I’m dealing with.”

“Yeah, no, I don’t think you do.” Sam puts his head against the doorjamb and bangs it softly a couple times. “So I take it we’re not going to Brooklyn?”

Steve takes Sam’s shirt front in his hands, runs his fingers up and down the placket, and Sam rolls his eyes so hard Steve thinks they might fly out of his skull and skitter down the hallway. But after a while, he covers Steve’s hands with his own and presses his forehead to Steve’s.

With a bone-weary sigh, Steve says, “I’m the only one who knows what it’s like, to be changed into something else, to be a weapon. The difference is, I had a say in it. If there’s someone in there who can still be reached, I’m the only one who can.”

“I know,” Sam says, and kisses him with so much tenderness Steve gets an ache in his belly. He pulls his head back and stares Steve down. “But what then? What if he does stay? How can we possibly get him the help he needs?” He shakes his head. “What the hell would that even look like? I don’t think there’s a shrink in the world with the qualifications to handle this. I told you I’m in it with you, but I’m worried about the toll it’s gonna take on you. That...that’s a lot harder for me to watch.”

“Well, first things first. I don’t even know if he’ll come back here. He could be anywhere by now.” Except all Steve can think of is _he was here, he took the sketches, he’s alone and confused and he needs me._ He lets go of Sam and smiles. “Why don’t we go test out the new wings, though, in the meantime?” If Bucky shows up again, it won’t be in broad daylight. And Steve needs to think about what he’ll say if he does.

 

****

On the long march back to camp, Steve frequently glanced over at Bucky, checking to see if he was holding up all right. He swore he wasn’t doing it that often, but after the first half day, Bucky had barked at him, “I swear to God, Steve, if I catch you looking at me one more time like I’m Tess Trueheart, I’ll shoot you.”

Steve had tried unsuccessfully to get Bucky to ride in one of the trucks, or at least on top of the strange half-track thing they’d confiscated, but he’d refused. As much as he was trying to soldier through, Bucky had been tortured, experimented on, and he was physically not up to the task of a forty-plus-mile hike in the cold November weather -- not that he would admit that to anyone, though. Steve wanted nothing more than to help him the way Bucky had always done for him, to throw Bucky’s arm over his shoulders, tuck his hip into Bucky’s side, half carrying him along. But that would only piss Bucky off more.

Everything had changed now, for both of them, and Steve did not know how to navigate this new, unmapped territory.

They were still a long way from camp by the time twilight first darkened the sky, and Steve suggested -- a suggestion which the others seemed to take as an order -- they do their best to hide the vehicles in the thickets, huddle together, and try to get some shut-eye. Each of the men badly needed food, some needed medical attention, but all they’d get that night was some water and a chance to sleep outside of a prison cage. 

Temperatures dropped quickly with nighttime, and they gathered close to stay warm. The men driving the forward truck offered Steve the cab as a kind of thank-you; Steve accepted only with the intention of dragging Bucky inside and letting him warm up, get the sleep he needed, since Bucky refused to get in the back with the seriously wounded soldiers. He had to actually drag Bucky by the collar of his sweater inside the cab -- Sergeant Barnes did not want special treatment his men weren’t getting. Neither did Steve, exactly, but if this was the only way he could take care of Bucky, he was damn sure going to do it.

After bickering for a good ten minutes, they settled in to the cab and Steve took his jacket off, draping it around Bucky and pulling him close. He unscrewed the cap from his canteen and made Bucky drink; Bucky shivered so hard the canteen clanked against his teeth and his dogtags rattled on his chest. It took some time, but as Steve rubbed his hand up and down Bucky’s arm, the shivering subsided.

“Do you remember how cold I used to get?” Steve asked. “Especially in the dead of winter, when that wind would just cut right through the walls... I don’t get that cold now. I mean, it’s cold out and I feel that, but it’s just like, say, an April night or something.”

“Never had any meat on your bones.” 

Steve pulled him even tighter against him, tucked Bucky’s head in the crook of his neck. “What did they do to you, Bucky?” He attempted to make it sound neutral, but it killed him to see his friend like this -- dried blood trailing from his ear, his eyes bloodshot, his clothes torn and filthy. For much of the hike that day, he’d worn a thousand-yard stare.

“I don’t remember all of it.” He played with the front of Steve’s shirt, like he thought the stars and stripes would peel away or something. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it. Maybe later.” His hand snaked around Steve’s waist. Steve tightened his hold. “I thought I was dreaming when I saw you.”

“I couldn’t accept that you might be dead. When I heard, I had to go looking for you. They’re probably going to give me the boot, though, now, for disobeying orders. Dishonorable discharge, despite my supposed value.”

“Tell me what happened to you.” Bucky’s voice was odd, strangled and hushed. As though he had trouble even bringing it up, because this change was too terrible to contemplate.

Steve brushed Bucky’s hair away from his eyes, rested his cheek on top of his head. He told him everything, from the moment Bucky had waved goodbye to him before heading to the port of embarkation up to the moment Peggy had found him at the USO show. Steve had hoped Bucky might fall asleep to his droning voice, but the whole time Bucky’s hand drew lazy circles on his side, and his breath quickened during the parts of the story where things got the diciest: when they had tried to shut it down, when he’d gone after the Hydra agent, when Howard had flown into anti-aircraft fire. He realized that Bucky was responding to this story just the same as he always had to threats back when they were together; he was concerned for Steve’s safety, even though he knew perfectly well Steve had come out the other end of it just fine. It was a reflex for Bucky, an undeniable part of his makeup.

Bucky was silent when he’d finished, and Steve hoped he’d fallen asleep at last, but then he said, distantly, “Dames throwing themselves at you, fellas falling all over themselves to be your buddy. Does it bother you, people reacting differently to you now? When before they wouldn’t have given you the time of day?”

Over the many months since the change, he’d considered that question more times than he cared to admit. “If I thought about it, it would. So I try not to think about it.” 

Once again, Bucky seemed to have fallen asleep, but then he mumbled, “Phillips is an idiot.”

“No, he’s not. He’s just trying to fight a war the only way he knows how. He had higher expectations.”

“He’s a moron, Steve. He didn’t need an army of you. He just needed _you,_ because anyone who knows you will follow you to the ends of the earth. He should have had some faith in you.”

“I don’t know, Buck.” People often had a hard time not seeing the old Steve even when they were looking right at the new one.

“Well, I do. Do you honestly think it was an accident that Peggy came looking for you? She knew you were capable of more. She believed in you like I do. That doctor did. And look, you _were_ capable of more.”

Steve took Bucky’s hand from around his waist and pressed it to his mouth. “Oh my God, your hands are ice cold.” He enveloped Bucky’s hands in his, blew warm, moist breath over them. The windows were covered in condensation. When he’d warmed up enough, Bucky gave Steve a wistful smile, then shifted over toward the passenger side, where he drew a heart in the mist, then an S on one side and a B on the other. At last he lay down on the seat, put his head in Steve’s lap, and curled up to sleep. Steve adjusted his jacket so it covered him as much as possible, and put his hand on the side of Bucky’s head, idly combing fingers through his dirt-streaked hair until he, too, fell asleep. 

He dreamt that he’d been too late to save Bucky. By the time he’d reached him, they were throwing his body down a long, dark hole.

Steve woke when the purple and orange tendrils of dawn filled the sky. He stroked Bucky’s shoulder until Bucky woke up, ran his hands over his face, took a last swig out of the canteen, and climbed out of the truck. The faint outline of the heart was still there on the windshield. Steve smudged it away with his fingertips.

 

****

Did they make him a monster, or had he always been one?

He’s been reading up about Barnes -- about himself -- and his history with Rogers. Barnes was always there behind Rogers, or next to him. Never in front. But there’s something darker in what he did. He wasn’t the symbol, out front, so he could move in shadow. Dark approach.

So maybe it was always inside him. Nothing he reads tells him that’s true. And would Rogers love a monster? But he recognizes something he can’t put his finger on. Not just yet.

He’s maintained a follow on Rogers and his friend Wilson. Keeps his distance until he can engage. There are no orders from absent masters, so he must strategize tactics, timing, on his own. He has a hotel room not too far from where Wilson lives, learns their running routes, their sleep and wake times. If they know he’s out there, he hasn’t seen it yet.

The more intel he gleans, the more used to the names he becomes. Used to the faces, too. This is Barnes’s face. Barnes is a soldier’s name. That’s who he’ll be.

He dreams in red and white. Over and over he’s crashing through water, hurled up against rocks by powerful current, shredded by roots and branches. As soon as he breaks the surface he’s ripped back down, churns around, hits bottom, water flooding air from his lungs. When he’s spit back out it’s always so, so quiet and so, so cold.

He awakens alone, sweating, a wail rising up in his throat. He tells himself his name is Bucky Barnes, and he had a friend once, as if it puts the monster back in its place and he’s a human being.

It’s as much as he can do to keep on mission, so he discards the dreams and the fear each day anew. They’re of no use to him now. He’s not always certain what is, though. Sometimes he sits on the edge of the bed and stares at his hands, and it’s hours until he realizes it. There is food, a place to sleep. Barnes doesn’t need much more than that; he’s a soldier, after all.

One day he’s following Rogers and Wilson and they go to Rogers’s apartment. Barnes gets an unfamiliar sensation in the pit of his stomach, a flutter, his nerve endings alight. What if Rogers sees that he was there, and that he took one of the sketches? He watches the two of them walk through the apartment and then stop, and something changes in Rogers’s demeanor: he knows. Then the two of them talk, an intense conversation, until they kiss. 

Rogers has someone to love. The two leave the apartment, but this time he doesn’t follow them. If he thought about it, he might know why he chooses not to, but he tells himself knowing is of no use. He just doesn’t want to. And for the first time he can remember, he doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to. He waits.

The next time he goes to Wilson’s place, Rogers isn’t there. He has to backtrack, check all the variables of different patterns, and it costs him days until he finds Rogers at his own apartment again. They’ve patched up the outer wall and replaced the window. He’s talking to a blond woman when Barnes first sees him; she’s pulling surveillance equipment, piling it on his dining table. They hug when she leaves, and Rogers opens all the blinds, watching out the windows.

This confuses him. Is it an invitation or a trap? Neither choice is ideal. But Barnes gets his answer that night: Rogers leaves the window open. He takes the invitation.

He crouches in the corner of the bedroom, watching Rogers sleep. The sound of his breath is comforting, it reminds him of his own when they put him away, those first few seconds before cold, dark oblivion takes over. The blond hair catches a gleam of light from the street. Rogers should look peaceful, rested, but instead he’s careworn, brow furrowed. It occurs to Barnes that it’s his fault, and he wonders if he could apologize for that.

Abruptly Rogers awakens, sitting up in the bed and squeezing the sheets in his fists, staring at him with eyes wide. But he makes no move for a weapon. After a few breaths he relaxes and says, “Bucky.”

He doesn’t press. Just watches Barnes from across the room. They stay that way, minutes stretching out till he loses count, until he says, “Who am I?” His voice is weak and shaky, as hard as he tries to maintain control.

“You’re my friend.” Rogers pulls his knees up, circles his arms around them.

“I’m not him. And I’m not _him_.”

Rogers seems surprised by that. He considers it for a while, and then he says, “I understand that. I was that way for a while. You were the one who helped me figure it out.”

He shakes his head. It’s not the same. 

“Can I turn on the light? I’d like to see you.” Barnes shakes his head again. “Okay, that's all right, we can leave it off.” Rogers waits some more, then says, “Are you getting enough to eat? You have somewhere to sleep?” 

He nods. “I see pieces of things. I don’t know if they’re real or...or they put them in me.” There’s an echo in his head when he talks, because words never belonged to him before, they were just for someone else. _I I I. Me me me._

It’s the kindness in Rogers’s voice that scratches and tears at his skin. “Bucky, come in. Let me help you figure that out. Just come home.”

He’s up like a shot before he knows what he’s doing and onto the bed, hauling Steve down on his back and straddling him, gripping his throat with his metal hand. “I don’t have a home!” he screams, and there’s genuine fear in Steve’s eyes. He doesn’t want to do it but he’s got both hands on Steve’s throat and he just can’t stop himself. 

But Steve brings his arms up and snaps them out, breaking his hold. Barnes hits him with his elbow, Steve blocks the second thrust, he tries a palm-heel strike but Steve blocks that too. “Bucky,” he shouts, “stop it. It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”

Barnes squeezes his thighs together hard to try to pin Steve’s arms, but Steve brings a knee up into his kidneys and knocks the breath out of him. He balls up a metal fist to drive it into Steve’s cheek but Steve catches it in his palm, shoves back roughly. “God _dammit_ , Steve!” Barnes shouts and beneath him, Steve abruptly halts, going slack. Barnes stops, too, and they both just blink at each other in open-mouthed, stupefied shock. 

His hands circle Steve’s throat, but he’s not putting pressure on, and Steve lowers his hands ever so slowly onto Barnes’s hips. They stay that way for some time, as if moving or speaking is too difficult, too costly, until Steve says, “I know what it’s like. To be made into a weapon. To be changed. The difference is that it was my choice, and they didn’t torture me, they didn’t make me do things against my will. I can’t tell you how sorry--”

“Don’t.”

He presses his hands on Barnes’s hips, insistent and tentative at the same time. “I am so sorry.” He’s not sure but he thinks he sees the silver glimmer of tears trailing down the sides of Steve’s face. “I want to help you, Bucky. I want to bring you in from the cold, take care of you the way you always took care of me.” Steve moves his left arm up -- his shield arm, a darting thought reminds him -- and puts his hand on Barnes’s shoulder, then slowly strokes it down his arm. He’s aware, all at once, of the scorch of that hand and the body beneath him even through his clothes. That scraping metallic sound crashes in his ears. He wants to peel off his skin, rip his hair out, bash his head in if it will just. Stop. Screeching.

But he allows Steve to touch him instead, lets him bring the hand to his cheek. Squeezing his eyes shut, Barnes says, “You can’t help me.” He wants to ask the question that has been on his mind for so many days now -- if he was always a monster or if they made him that way -- but he can’t bear to hear the answer.

“I can. Stay with me, Bucky. Let me prove it to you. Just stay.”

Barnes draws in a ragged, deep breath, two, three. His heart pulses like a weapon on automatic fire. 

When he doesn’t get a response, Steve tries again. “You must be feeling so lost. I know what that’s like, too. To feel like you don’t belong here, that you don’t have anyone who understands you. If you stay, you won’t have to be lost again. You won’t have to be alone.”

The noise in his head competes with the booming heartbeat. “I prefer it this way. It hurts less.” 

Steve chokes back a racking sound Barnes doesn’t recognize, his face contorts as he presses his fingers into his eye sockets. He’s in pain, too. Barnes wants to give in, give up, give out. He’s so tired and it hurts so much. And now he’s hurting Steve.

Steve pries apart the fingers of his metal hand, presses his mouth to the palm. Reaches up and curves his own hand to the side of Barnes’s face, his thumb sweeping across his lips. The howling whine inside his head quiets, just enough so he can hear the sounds of the city outside the window and Steve’s soft breaths.

That twinge in the pit of his stomach returns, the one he’d felt when he saw Steve with Wilson. He’s quivering and there are words he could say but there’s just too many of them, way too many words and he doesn’t know how to choose the correct ones. Should he tell Steve that he saw him with Wilson? Steve would likely misunderstand, think he was angry or disappointed.

“If you leave here tonight, I’ll understand,” Steve says, stroking the side of his face. “You always told me I was too dumb to back down from a fight. So I’ll fight for you. But if you decide to come home, it will be your choice. I won’t let anyone make you do anything ever again. Whatever you decide to do, it’s because _you choose it_.”

No, he doesn’t want to leave. He’s awake to his senses in a way that’s puzzlingly foreign to him -- Steve’s soft t-shirt over hard muscle, the whispered rasp of breath, the tender warmth of the hand on his cheek. A shameful heat between his legs. Steve tries to tug him down next to him.

His mind erupts with shrill racket. Everything’s crashing around him and he can smell fire, he sees Steve beneath him, beneath his fist as he pounds his face, feels bone crunch and skin split open. _To the end of the line._

This, here, is the end of the line. Barnes yanks his hands away, stumbles off the bed on rubbery legs. Hurtles into sensory overload again, just like at the exhibit, and it’s _too much,_ too much. As he claws his way along the wall, Steve says his name over and over in a strangled voice.

When he’s at the window he hears Steve behind him. Doesn’t turn when he says, “My phone number is in your pocket. I’ll always be here for you. Don’t give up on me, Bucky. _Please._ Don’t leave me here alone.” If Steve says anything after that, he doesn’t hear it.


	3. Déjà Senti

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a shore, and you will reach it.

_There is a shore, and you will reach it._

_Though it feels like you’re lost at sea, nothing to cling to and no lifejacket, you’re strong enough to keep going until you get to that shore. You’ve survived so long. You’ll survive this._

_If I’m honest with myself, which I haven’t always been since they pulled me out of the ice, I was ready to give up, even with new friends in my life, even knowing you and Peggy were still in the world. But you did something extraordinary -- you pulled me back to shore. So I know you can make it to your own. What amazes me is that you fought back against them by saving me, even if you don’t know why you did it. That’s the most courageous decision you ever made, in a lifetime of being so brave and strong._

_I have loved you across decades and centuries, over countries and continents and oceans. Through times when we thought we had no hope to times when we had nothing but hope. When you’re ready, if you decide you want to come with me, I’ll bring you home._

 

Barnes didn’t find the letter in his pocket for days. He left Steve’s apartment and just kept moving; after some time he remembered what Steve had said about the phone number and out of curiosity fished it out of his pocket. He’d tried to pinpoint when Steve would have put it there, but his mind had been a mess of tangled, squirming thoughts, so he couldn’t pinpoint much of anything, let alone someone sneaking paper into a pocket. He’d hoped Steve could fix him, but Barnes had realized that in his quiet way, Steve was suffering as much as he was. 

The paper is thin, translucent onionskin, the kind they used back in the war for letters, folded in precise eighths. It’s written in cursive that feels hauntingly familiar. He remembers now, how Steve saved pennies for ages to buy some onionskin because it made excellent tracing paper, which helped him learn to draw architectural subjects better. 

More and more useless fragments like that fill his mind. He thinks he knows why: whenever they woke him, they used drugs, chemicals, physical and ocular stimulation to move his body and mind from inert to active. The farther away he gets from those chemicals, the more substance bleeds through, the more of _him_ comes out. At least he thinks it’s him. Doesn’t know if he wants that or not. But it also brings with it seizures, vertigo; he’d thought the screeching in his head was the worst but the vertigo makes the world spin so fast he’s flat on his back for hours, he can’t orient long enough to walk. He vomits, too, sometimes for hours with the world spinning, and he can’t predict when it will hit. There are brutal muscle cramps; headaches come more often. The worst is where the metal arm meets shoulder; it seizes so violently after a fit of vomiting he almost punches himself in the face. It’s painful, but he’s known pain for so long that he can endure. Doesn’t know what else to do besides endure. 

_There is a shore, and you will reach it._

So he roams, when he can. After he left Steve’s place, he’d wandered Dupont Circle; daylight broke and the world came to life. He found himself in front of an art museum, the Phillips Collection, and he went in, just because Steve had been an artist and it seemed like something to do, something Steve would do, or maybe just to kill time. There’s a photograph that looks like how he feels -- dark clouds teeming against the barest hint of lighter sky behind them, black and white, a monochrome world. It pulls him in, quiets his mind. 

So after that he roams some more, visits the galleries big and small that fill this city. One day he sees a painting, far up on a wall, that pierces the scraps of what he can call a soul. _Night and Her Daughter Sleep._ He doesn’t know what it is about this painting out of all the others he’s scanned with no sense of engagement, can’t find the words for it -- Steve would know, Steve could explain the way art speaks to someone -- but there’s a quality in the loving gaze of Night upon her daughter, the peace and contentment Sleep shows. The velvet black and diamond studs of stars. Somewhere he wants to go. _Let’s go outside and count stars._ Barnes knows he has seen such tenderness before, it’s there in the pictures and the newsreels, but it’s lost to him, trapped behind the miles of tangled barbed wire that is his mind. Wings frame Sleep’s face, Steve wore wings on this helmet. Barnes wore his on his shoulder, in solidarity to Captain America. Night holds a star in her hand. He stares at the painting for so long the guard gets twitchy. He leaves, but comes back, again and again.

The days slip by. He’s going slack, so he starts working out when he can bear it, makes his own little gym from what’s in his room. He doesn’t use the bed for sleeping, anyway. Takes medicine he can buy over the counter to try to tamp down the nausea. Figures he’ll need to break into a pharmacy at some point. The TV news is still filled, weeks later, with the Insight disaster, but he avoids it whenever they’re not talking about Steve because it’s of no interest to him.

Until it is. Until he catches Pierce’s face on the screen one night, and remembers looking at him upside down from that chair, the old man’s face set in a hard line, reminding him who he belonged to. Remembers being backhanded across the face, remembers Pierce telling him that he’d met Steve only that week. Remembers Pierce’s hollow stories, and then “wipe him.” The rage, once dead, is inspirational as the emotion stirs inside him; he savors it, poison boiling up, leaving the acid sting of bile in his throat and burning fire in his gut. 

It gives him a mission. So he goes out to the storage room in Rockville where he’s stashed what he took from Pierce’s safe and a weapons cache, brings it back to his hotel. For hours he leafs through personal files that appear to be nothing more than bank statements, investments, family records. But the asset can see so much more in the numerals and letters: armories, safehouses, laboratories, operation bases, conspirators.

There is calm in calculation. Focus in planning. Silence in execution.

Hydra’s destruction could be his gift to Steve Rogers.

 

****

He found Bucky in a tent, new uniform on but still disheveled. There were five other cots in the half-squad tent, and Steve sat on one, across from Bucky, who was packing his ruck. “So what did the doc say?”

Bucky shrugged, his back to Steve. “Didn’t see him yet.” 

“Bucky,” Steve said, frustration sharpening the edges of his voice more than he wanted.

“What about you?” Bucky asked, changing the subject. “Did the brass decide not to haul you up in front of a court-martial?”

Steve shook his head. “Colonel Phillips won’t let them.”

“Told you so. There’s only one thing Uncle Sam likes more than a little initiative, and that’s actual success. You gave them a big publicity coup. They’ll be bragging it up for the rest of the war.”

“Though there is also the question of my rank -- apparently you can’t have a summary court-martial for a captain, so they’d have had to, you know, work at it.” Steve grinned. “There’s nothing that says whether I’m a real captain or not. Technically I guess I’m still a corporal. Or something. No one’s ever given me an official commission. The whole thing is so bizarre.”

“This oughta be good for you. You get to order me around now.” He sat down at last, and looked Steve in the eye. “Good for you, too, in that next time I try to save your sorry ass from a fight, you can just pull rank on me.”

“Well, with any luck, I won’t be in any more of those fights.” He toyed with his hat, turned it around and around in his hands. “The only kind of fighting I want from now on is against Hydra and the German army. With you, and anyone else who’ll come along.”

Bucky raised his eyebrow. “So they’re not only not going to give you disciplinary action, they’re going to reward you with a squad?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. We’ll see.” Cleared his throat. “Why haven’t you gone to the doctor? You have to be seen to.” Bucky had told him, after Steve had grilled him on the march back, that he’d been pissing and occasionally even coughing blood since he got off the table. 

Yet again Bucky deflected. “They give you quarters with the other officers? Or are you going back to the USO?”

“They’re clearing out a tent for me. Supplies or something. I didn’t want special treatment but they keep pushing things on me by way of thanks, and...it’s just me in it. You could join me. We leave for England day after tomorrow, anyway.” There were still wounded to be seen to, reports to be written. They wanted as much intelligence from Steve as he could provide, but his priority was with Bucky.

When the men had cheered for him, he’d felt a pride that was utterly unfamiliar to him. Yet it had been marred by the sadness he’d seen in Bucky’s eyes. Intellectually he accepted the way others now treated him, but his heart still held a shadowy presence of doubt, and he wondered if Bucky had known that. 

Bucky said, “Hell yeah, I’ll come. God, not having to breathe the stink of a bunch of guys crowded together again will do me just fine.” 

“On one condition. You go see the doc.” God, he resented harping on it, but Bucky was being so stubborn. That had always been his province, not Bucky’s. 

Anger rose to the surface, Bucky’s eyes growing dark, storm clouds rolling in on a summer day. “God dammit, Steve.” He raked fingers through his hair, paced around the tent. “I don’t want someone poking at me again. Taking my blood.”

Steve reached out for him, grabbed him by the wrist. “What did they do to you, Buck? You have to tell me.”

“I don’t remem--”

“Bullshit. You’re shaking like a leaf. You’ve looked like hell since we started back to camp. Your eyes are glassy when they’re not red-rimmed and showing so much white you look like a scared horse.” They’d always had an understanding with each other, silent language shared. His pain was like a knife slipping in between Steve’s ribs, so close to his heart.

Bucky put his back up against a pole, crossed his arms over his chest like a small child. “I really don’t remember everything. And the things I do remember I don’t want to talk about with a bunch of asshole officers. Maybe even with you. They put...things in me. Chemicals. There was this machine that did things to my head.” He ran his fingers through his hair, dropped his chin. “I don’t want them seeing the marks, poking at ’em. What if there’s still something in my blood? You said they wanted to send you to New Mexico, make you a lab rat. That’s what they’re going to do to me, Steve. I’m the only one who came back from that room.”

He’d had a choice when they put him on a table, injected chemicals into him. He’d known what he was getting into, and had even had the chance to decide to keep going in the middle of the procedure. Bucky had had no such choice, and couldn’t even trust his own side.

Steve moved to him and put his arms around him. “I’m so sorry.”

Bucky tried to squirm from his grasp, but he was no match for Steve’s new strength. “Steve, don’t, someone could come in here and see.”

“Don’t give a damn.” Bucky relaxed a fraction, let Steve hold him, before he pushed Steve gently away with a palm to the chest. “Forget about the docs, then. Let’s just go find this tent.” They went in search of the orderly, got squared away in short order, and then it was meal time in the mess. Steve hadn’t known whether to eat with the enlisted men or the officers, but then the men cleared a space for him, crowding around, thanking him some more. 

Later there were reports to make and sign, and a chance to talk with Peggy, before he made his way back to the tent. Bucky was reading an ancient _Saturday Evening Post_ by the amber light of a kerosene lamp. He was so impossibly handsome, and Steve wished he could sketch him right then, gilded by the light.

“Hey,” Bucky said, leaning up on an elbow. “How was it?”

“Irritating, mostly. I guess this is my future, though.”

“Aw, tough luck, pal.” 

“Some of the boys in your unit are playing poker if you wanted to join them.” Bucky shook his head. “You look good.”

“Got some more chow, a shower, shaved. I could piss on myself harder than those showers, but it felt damn good.”

Steve took off his jacket, realized he still hadn’t taken off the Captain American jersey. He’d have to get a proper uniform in the morning. 

“Should hit the hay. Just because we’re back from a prison, doesn’t mean we won’t have to get up at 0600. No slacking in this man’s army.” Bucky moved to turn off the lamp

His voice was cast low, sharp, and Steve couldn’t define what was wrong about it but something sure was. There had always been a darkness in Bucky, one he saw only rarely but had always known was there. He’d seen those shadows creep to the surface today.

Bucky killed the light, but before he could lie back on the cot Steve knelt down in front of him, putting his hands alongside Bucky’s legs, staring up at him in the dark. “Ever since we got back to camp, you’ve been...I don’t know. Angry, or hurt? Is it because of the”--he couldn’t say the words _torture_ or _experiments_ , they stuck in his throat and burned--“things that happened back there? Please let me in, Buck. I can’t stand this coldness. Not from you.”

Bucky leaned down -- no longer such a distance as it used to be -- and pressed his forehead to Steve’s; his hand found Steve’s shoulder. “I don’t know how...I’m sorry, Steve. I didn’t mean for it to be this way. I’m grateful to you, more grateful than you will ever, ever know.” Bucky stopped, breathing hard, swallowing repeatedly. Trying not to break down, Steve knew.

“Can’t you tell me what’s hurting you?”

There were answers in his silence, but Steve wasn’t smart enough, experienced enough, to hear them. He put his hand to the side of Bucky’s face, held it there, felt the turmoil under his skin, muscles twitching.

Time spun out between them, until Bucky said, with an uncertainty Steve had never heard before, “You were always so good and...gentle. When you weren’t picking fights, that is.” They both laughed, breath warm against each other’s faces. “And those fights you picked were always because you saw something wrong, someone being hurt. I just wanted you to stay there, stay home and not...see all this. Become what you have to become to be a soldier. Lose your compassion and your goodness.”

“I know. You always wanted to protect me.”

His grip on Steve’s shoulder tightened. “It’s not that, jackass.” He sighed. “Or not just that. Now you’re...you’re more than just a soldier. You’ll be the Army’s shiny new weapon.”

“One that doesn’t need you to take care of him anymore.”

“No, you don’t.”

He pulled Bucky down to him, there on the cold ground, Bucky straddling his hips. So many times they’d done this in reverse; now Steve was the one who cradled Bucky. “I always will. I could never do this without you. I kept hoping, the days before the procedure, that it would work so I could come here and fight with you. I hated that I couldn’t do my part, but I hated even more that I couldn’t do it with you. I mean, who was gonna look after you? I’m not the only one needs keeping an eye on.”

“Okay. Okay,” Bucky mumbled, and Steve thought he felt something wet on his neck where Bucky’s cheek was pressed.

He held him that way for a long time, neither of them wishing to shatter the silence.

“Besides,” Steve said at last, “I do need you. I didn’t have a goddamn clue what I was actually doing when I went to that factory. They put me through basic, but it wasn’t...wasn’t what you went through, the length of time and the training with all the weapons. I think I shot my rifle maybe twice? And got knocked on my ass both times. It's just been prop guns since then. The other fellas kind of set me up to fail, too. I need you to fill in the missing pages, help me be better at this soldiering thing. Because I still haven’t figured it out and I will get myself killed if you don’t. A bullet’s still a bullet and a grenade’s still a grenade.” He laughed against Bucky’s neck, hoping to lighten the mood.

Bucky huffed against him. “Every goddamn time, I swear. You never think ahead. You’re the smartest fella I ever met, but you never think of the consequences.” He leaned back, watching him as if he was looking for some sign of the old Steve, the one he’d protected for so long. 

“All right, then. Tell me what’s going to happen next. After we get back to England.”

The facade of lightness slipped from Bucky’s face, the shadows returned. Steve’s heart twisted and darted inside his chest, a bird battering against a cage. “We’re gonna get every one of those fucking rat bastards. I want to wipe them off the face of the earth.”

“We can do that,” Steve said. “We will.” He threaded fingers through Bucky’s hair, pressed his lips to Bucky’s cheek. Waited for the drumming, pounding inside him to stop. “Will you be all right?”

“As long as you’re here.” He kissed Steve’s cheek, by the corner of his eye. “What I said before. I’m not disappointed you’re here. God, Steve, how could I be? I just...I’m scared they took away my friend. That I lost that sweet guy who always saw the good in everyone, who drew pictures and got sick if the wind blew the wrong direction and made corny jokes. Who let a good for nothin’ punk like me love him.”

Steve pulled Bucky’s mouth to his, kissing him over and over. “You couldn’t lose me if you tried. You’re stuck with me.” He held Bucky in his lap a while, willing him to relax, rest, but Bucky didn’t. Wouldn’t.

“Stevie, there’s still blood in my piss. When I cough, too. What happens if it doesn’t go away? Then I’ll _have_ to see the doctors. They’ll take me off the line. They’ll lock me away. Or hell, maybe I’m just dying.”

His grip tightened on Bucky’s arm, and Bucky winced. “It’s only been a couple of days. Let’s wait and see. You’re not dying. I won’t let you, jackass.” Everyone had credited him with being so brave and strong to go through the procedure. He’d never told anyone that his strength had always come from Bucky. Life without him wouldn’t mean a goddamn thing.

He pulled the blankets off both cots and threw them on the ground, then rolled over atop them, still holding Bucky close against him. “You need sleep. We’ll figure things out in the morning, okay?”

“I’ll teach you to _properly_ shoot a pistol and a rifle. Maybe see if we can’t grab a bazooka or a Bangalore. And you’ll need to familiarize yourself with those Hydra weapons. Least now you won’t get knocked on your ass.”

“Okay. Shut up now. Shut up and rest.” They both chuckled at that -- how many times had Bucky said the same thing to Steve when he’d been confined to a bed? “Knock it off,” Steve said, and socked him on the arm. 

After some time, Bucky mumbled against his neck, “And knife skills for close-contact fighting because you’re a suicidal bastard. And you need to learn how to drive.” 

He waited until he was sure Bucky was asleep, and whispered against his cheek, “As long as it’s together.”

 

****

Summer came and went, and there was still no sign of Bucky. In the first few weeks, Steve and Sam had followed up on any lead they could get their hands on, no matter how unlikely. Tony had JARVIS sift through records, CCTV cameras, whatever he could --legally or not -- gain access to. That led them to a few places like cheap hotels and convenience stores in and around Washington, but the most promising item was a highway camera capture off the Beltway near Rockville. Like all the other sightings, though, they’d ended up being a day late and a dollar short.

He’d told Sam about the visit, and Natasha, too. Steve had hoped that when enough time had passed, Bucky would call, or come back to the apartment, but he never did. Sam had teased him about giving Bucky the letter, saying, “So, you slipped him a note? Did you tell him you _liked him_ liked him?”

“More like a letter. Okay, a note. Well, a letter.” Which hadn’t helped, because that had made Sam laugh all the harder. He supposed most people would hate the way Sam teased, but it kept him grounded, smoothed the perpetual rollercoaster ride his emotions were on since he’d first seen Bucky’s face.

Steve had no way of knowing if Bucky had even found the letter. At first he stayed in his apartment -- even if he did spend most nights with Sam, either there or at his place -- and kept to an identifiable routine, just in case Bucky still watched. 

The unforeseen perk of being a man of leisure, Steve discovered, was that he had time to truly build his friendships. He’d never really thought of it before, because growing up it was just Bucky and there was no work involved with him; then he was in the Army where, outside of Dr. Erskine and Peggy, no one had had even the slightest bit of goodwill toward him until he was changed and leading a squad. And then he was dead. 

Meeting Sam had taught him how empty he’d allowed his life to become. He’d maintained contact with the other Avengers, but he hadn’t _worked_ at it. It was either Natasha and sometimes Clint on a SHIELD op, or playing shoulder to lean on to Tony -- not that he didn’t learn to like Tony, it just had never been something he’d planned on. He’d thrown himself into operational leadership for SHIELD, because it was a great excuse not to need anything from anyone, and it didn’t allow him time to grieve his own history. It really hadn’t been until Sam had so subtly invited him to a veterans support group -- and Steve had been very aware of just what he was doing that day they’d first met -- that he’d seen the empty spaces which surrounded him, and learned what it might take to fill them. Tony had been right: he’d been a tourist in the Land of People Who Know How to Have Fun for too long. 

And Natasha, maybe the last person he’d have expected to, filled up another space. The day they’d gone to test out Sam’s new wings for the first time, the day he’d discovered Bucky had been in his apartment, he’d received an unexpected call from her, telling him she was in the area for a few days. When he said he and Sam were driving out past Greenbelt to flight test, she’d paused for a minute, then said, “Why don’t I drive.” Not a question, even, just a friendly demand.

“Why would you need to drive?”

“Well, not that I doubt Stark’s ability to dismantle and reverse-engineer something as sophisticated as those wings, but just on the off-chance he was having a bad day or used a cracked O-ring or something, someone will need to be able to drive Wilson to the hospital while you play medic in the back seat.” 

Steve worked his mouth a couple times, but nothing came out. He had to concede she had a good point. 

“The O-ring is a reference to--”

“The Challenger disaster. Yes, I know.”

“Sorry, it’s a reflex. I know you’ve had time to learn our mysterious ways. I just can’t imagine how hard it must be, and I’m being aggressively helpful.”

“No, I appreciate it. I really do.”

So the three of them had gone together, Natasha filling him in on what she’d been up to when she wasn’t testifying, under extreme duress, in front of DoD committees or locked up in logistical meetings. When they’d found the place Sam was thinking of, Steve and Natasha had taken up a spot on the sidelines to watch him, iced lattes in hand. 

It had been a thing of true beauty, watching Sam soar upward, spinning, arcing, diving, the whoops and hollers and laughter echoing across the surrounding landscape. Steve had never really had the chance to see Sam in action, it had just been those few minutes with Sitwell, then again on the Charlie helicarrier when he’d carried him up top. Steve recalled that technically he’d flown in to knock Bucky down, but he’d retained next to nothing about that event, so lost in his moment of discovery and confusion. 

And yet Steve couldn’t help feeling that Natasha’s sudden presence had been about something very specific. As usual she played it close to the vest, an expert at holding her cards, always and forever. A few times he caught her side-eyeing him, but she smiled mysteriously and gazed off in the distance, inviting no questions.

Eventually she’d said, eyes trained on Sam, “You two are pretty cute together.”

He’d cringed and rolled his eyes beseechingly heavenward. “Does everyone know about this?”

“Well, Stark knows, so that means everyone knows. I’ll admit it surprised me, but when I thought about it...he’s good for you. You’re good for him, too, I think. But it also means you’re flexible, since you were in love with Agent Carter, and that means I wasn’t entirely off base.” Her smile was positively wicked.

“And you never told me that not-neighbor not-nurse not-Kate was actually Peggy’s grandniece, either. You all must be laughing behind my back so hard you can’t stand up straight. It’s kinda freaking me out this is a thing.”

“That and the ‘citizens for a bisexual Cap’ hashtag on Tumblr.” She’d frowned at him when he made a whimpering sound. “I’m joking.”

“I know. It’s just...why is everyone so concerned with my sex life? And...so wait, that means you’ve been in touch with both Sam and Sharon. Behind my back.”

“She contacted me when you said you wanted the surveillance pulled in your apartment because you were staying there again. She was worried. That led to me contacting Sam. I just wanted to make sure someone was looking out for you in case he decided to engage.” Natasha had glanced off to the side then, as if something in the far distance had caught her eye and brought with it a wistful softness. “Everyone cares about you, Steve. I don’t know how it happened, but it’s like we’re all living in the Everybody Loves Rogers show. And that’s not a bad thing.” She had reached over for his hand, he didn’t notice until he felt her slim, small fingers slide around his own. “We all just want to make sure you’re okay.”

He wiped his hand down his face. “Man. All these people with super-capabilities and you’re all just...just...Gladys Kravitzes.”

Arching her eyebrow, she’d asked, “So, _Bewitched_? Huh.”

“I’m taking TV highlights by the decade. Plus Sam’s favorites. We alternate. I’m up past the seventies now.”

All the while they’d talked, Steve had kept waiting for something disastrous to happen, for the power to cut out or a joint to not bend properly, but Sam continued to soar. Then he swooped over to Steve, who held his arm up, and Sam hooked on to him, carrying him aloft. Somehow it felt so perfectly, metaphorically apt, this new friend bringing him to new heights. He laughed as he sped through the air, and Sam called down to him, “This is waaay better for lifting your heavy ass, I’ll tell you what. Feels like driving a v-eight after being in a four-banger for years.” Steve had absolutely no idea what that meant, but he couldn’t have cared less. For a little while, he was free, happy, light.

After Sam set Steve down and landed himself, Natasha had raised her eyebrows and gave a little head tilt. “Lunch? Or we could take Captain Antique to Goddard. See some of that newfangled space travel stuff. Did you hear they have a telescope in space, and it sends color pictures?”

“Already been,” Steve said, smiling, and gave her a gentle punch on the shoulder. 

“I try to take him on field trips,” Sam said, packing his wings into the back of the SUV. “Mostly he wants to see Civil War battlefield sites, but I told him he was on his own for that. Not that I disrespect the history but I’ve had enough of that memorializing dead soldiers shit to last a lifetime.”

“Mmm,” Natasha had said, then squinched up her face. “I know a place near here. Good burgers for you manly men. Let’s go sit.” Clearly she had something she wanted to tell him when he was sitting down. They’d chatted amiably on the way there, Sam giving them the full run-down of what he thought worked -- mostly everything -- and didn’t work -- a few tiny things in the goggles’ HUD interface -- about the new wings.

Once they’d sat down and ordered, Steve smiled at Natasha and said, “So are you going to finally tell me what you’ve been holding back on all day?”

Sam had glanced between both of them. “Uh-oh. Are we telling secrets that I’ll, like, get killed in my sleep for hearing?”

She twisted her mouth sideways. “Not at all. If you’re going to be on Steve’s team, you’ll learn all this stuff soon enough, anyway.” A pause, and then she pushed a USB drive toward Steve. “The first thing I wanted to tell you is that Agent Coulson’s alive. It’s a pretty...grim story, maybe not as grim as your friend’s, but it’s not easy to read about. He’s been alive for a while, but Nick decided to keep that eyes only. And no, I don’t know why.” 

Steve rubbed his forehead. “I don’t even know where to start. This is so far beyond the pale.” Sam had eyeballed him with that sort of “are we gonna need a time-out here?” face Steve had grown to know so well.

“Before you get worked up about that one... He’s been tasked by Nick with rebuilding SHIELD.”

He had drawn his mouth in a tight line, trying to keep himself from blurting out obscenities in a restaurant. This was just this sort of thing that brought out every curse word he knew -- and he’d been in the army, so he knew plenty. 

All the time he’d been visiting with Peggy, he’d kept the news of SHIELD’s destruction and its infiltration by Hydra from her, and asked her family to protect her from the news. As far as he’d been aware, even on her best days, she didn’t know. He’d asked her, though, about the early days, about Howard and Dugan and the others, what they’d done to vet people back then, most of all what SHIELD’s participation in Operation Paperclip had really been and how that had influenced Hydra’s growth under everyone’s noses. The last thing he wanted was to see them try again and fail just as badly, with one man in charge of all the compartments. It wasn’t that he didn’t think there should be someone standing between organizations like Hydra and ordinary citizens, but he didn’t trust anyone these days.

And yet, he had been so glad to hear that Coulson was alive. “You know what?” he’d said, spreading his hands out flat. “I’m not going to make this my problem. I’ll focus on the good news. Is Coulson...he’s okay now, though, right?”

“It was not pleasant, if I understand correctly. A bit like your friend.” She very pointedly still referred to Bucky as his friend or the Winter Soldier. Only once in a great while referring to him as Barnes. “It’s all there on the thumb drive. Nick’s okayed you seeing it. The file will rewrite itself after you’ve looked at it.”

“Is that one of those ‘this message will self-destruct in fifteen seconds’ kind of things?” Sam had asked, grinning. Natasha had shrugged and smiled. “Cool. Very cool.”

When his reuben arrived, Steve had lost his appetite; Sam had happily tucked into an extremely large burger and an almost comically huge mocha-flavored milkshake, all the better for avoiding the tension that had sprouted up between him and Natasha. 

She’d focused on sipping her iced tea, poking a bit at a cobb salad, before saying, “I’m not going to try to convince you that this is good. As much as SHIELD means to me, I don’t know how I feel about it myself. But what I don’t want is for this to come between you and the rest of the team. Stark still wants you in New York, we all do. Banner’s there, Barton, me, and believe it or not, Thor actually pops into his floor from time to time. And if Sam thinks he can tolerate us, we’d love to have him, too. You never know when aliens from another dimension might want a piece of the action again.”

They’d left it there, finished their meal, but Natasha had given him that cryptic stare before dropping them off, and said, “Me, I don’t have much else I can do. They...made me for this. I’m a spy and an assassin, it’s what I do. They made you for something else. No one would have trouble understanding if you walked away and never looked back, but I would miss you if you did.”

Later that night he’d lain in bed with Sam, idly tracing circles around and around on Sam’s shoulder. His mind had been, as Thor once said of Loki with a phrase that had stuck in his head, far afield. Everything Natasha had told him, everything he’d been trying to process for so many weeks, had been jumbled up in his head and he wasn’t sure what to do. All he really wanted was to find Bucky, but there were people who wanted things from him, needed things, and he’d never been one to back away from that.

“You know, as nice as that was when you started, you’re wearing a hole in my skin. It’s starting to feel like a dog trying to dig up a bone.”

“Sorry!” Steve had grimaced and jerked his hand away.

“Nah, man, it’s okay, just change it up. Move somewhere else.” 

Steve had asked him, “Would you want to go to New York?”

“It’d be tough, with the people who need me at the VA. But I could try to swing it. Or do the commute. People do it all the time these days.”

“I guess we can see, then. Take the wings up to New York, see Stark, and then...figure it out from there.” 

Sam had kissed the hollow of his throat, and Steve felt the smile on his lips against his skin as well as Sam’s hand creeping up his thigh. “Like I said, move your hand somewhere else.”

 

“Hey, handsome,” Natasha says on the screen of his computer. If there’s one thing that reminds him he’s living in the future, it’s being able to see other people on his phone or computer no matter where in the world they are. “How was your summer vacation?” 

“Good. Went to the shore, saw all the summer blockbusters, tried to chase a hot memory-challenged assassin around.” He puts his hands under his chin, tilts his head. “Hung out with my cute boyfriend. He took me flying. How about yours?”

“Almost the same.” She smiles again and holds a folder toward the camera. “You got time to see me? I have some news about your memory-challenged assassin.”

He tries to keep his heart rate down, breathes a few times as shallowly as he can so Natasha doesn’t see the momentary panic rise in him. This is the first time he’s heard anything that could be solid in months -- and Natasha would never call ahead to tell him that she had anything less than solid. Every sighting they’d had simply turned out to be old information by the time they’d received it, and in the end, Steve had found himself as close to giving up as he could come by nature. He’d kept his apartment in D.C. just in case Bucky came back, left him information about his whereabouts, but had no hope Bucky would ever show up again.

“For you, always. When are you coming back?” He’s still getting used to living in Stark’s tower. He’s come to terms with the architecture, which, when you get right down to it, isn’t _really_ as bad as Steve makes it out to be, but he’s damned if he’ll admit that to Tony. 

It helped that he had really loved the inside of the building. Everyone assumed that he wouldn’t like modern, high-tech styles, but he appreciates the clean lines and shiny surfaces, the floor to ceiling windows, the soft blue lighting in the hallways and common rooms that filters from behind crevices and corners, the way JARVIS helped you navigate around the place, unobtrusive yet always present and polite. He loves his huge bed in the east-facing bedroom where morning sun steals across his face and wakes him, and he can see New York spread out before him as he dresses each day. The en-suite bathroom is larger than the entire apartment he’d grown up in, the shower alone bigger than his tiny bedroom. He has a fantastic workout room of his own if he doesn’t feel the need for the larger gym upstairs.

Pepper had ensured nothing was compromised on and had it designed to his exact specifications -- “Don’t let Tony have even a glance at the design boards or you’ll regret it,” she’d warned -- and that was a task he’d never thought to enjoy as much as he did. It’s a fresh start for him; he was eager to live in a space less “early twentieth century melancholia,” as Tony referred to his previous place. If he gets nostalgic, that’s easily remedied by the presence of his friends and his love for the city he’d grown up in. Mostly he’s happy that Sam is here to share the space with him, because he knows none of it would mean a thing if he gets too far inside his own head and lets his failure to rescue Bucky crowd out the smaller joys of being alive and in this world.

“ETA of...” she leans back a little, out of frame, and he realizes she’s on a jet, wonders if it’s one of the last of the SHIELD quinjets. Probably checking with Barton. “See you in about two hours? Is Sam there? Or is he still commuting to Washington?”

“He’s still commuting but he’s in New York right now, just not in the building. He should be back from his group by then. But I think he’s getting more and more interested in staying put up here.”

There’s a slight twitch at the corner of her mouth. “I hope so.” Not for the first time, Steve wonders what exactly her relationship is with Barton, because she never fails to flirt with Sam in a provocative yet restrained way and Sam outrageously flirts back, far less restrained. But Sam’s reminded him on more than a few occasions that people these days are a lot more flexible about relationships, and flirting’s not the same as actually doing anything, so he files it away as one of those things he will get up to speed on at some point. He supposes a normal guy would be jealous, but it never rankles him.

Because he’ll be restless and anxious waiting for her, instead of making coffee in his flat and watching the clock, he goes to the communal “break room” that Tony had built between the R&D floors and their living quarters. Considering how huge their individual places are, he didn’t really get why they needed a break room to hang out in, but the first time he went in, he understood. There’s a theatre, a complete espresso and tea bar, a fully stocked alcoholic bar with beers on tap and a fancy kitchen to go with it, huge couches everywhere as well as comfy chairs and tables, and more media than you’d get in a library, including old and new vinyl records, which Steve finds enormously comforting. Not to mention the state of the art equipment to play it all on, or stream, or whatever you want to do. There are board games and computer games and video games and games he hasn’t figured out yet how to play, like Twister, which Barton swears is fun but that no one will play with either him or Thor, so he has yet to find out why.

When he gets up there it’s empty, which is surprisingly disappointing. Eyeing the espresso machine, he thinks about tackling it again when Dr. Banner enters, chewing on an endpiece of his glasses and riffling through papers. Neither Steve nor Thor have yet to fully master the commercial-grade coffee equipment, which everyone finds hilarious, but Tony overexplained everything -- from how not to get burned to not having too coarse or too fine a grind so you get the right crema to apparently a million things related to milk, and after that Steve thought it was just easier to go down to the tower lobby’s coffee shop or simply make plain old-fashioned coffee in his apartment. 

He likes Banner, a lot, finds his presence relaxing, and Banner always seems so cheerfully astonished by Steve’s enjoyment of his company. It reminds him a bit of when he was young, how he just expected that each new person would judge him negatively on his appearance, accepted that it would be that way because it was easier than hoping for better. Banner must get that a lot, but he never holds it against anyone.

“Need help with the coffee?” he asks, barely even looking up. “Not that I’m assuming you do because you’re technologically incompetent, I know you aren’t, just that I’ve seen the way Tony messes with you about these things. By the time he’s done explaining, you just want to take the easy way out.”

“There are battles I’m willing to fight, but somehow this machine has become the hill I don’t want to die on, I guess.”

“I like making espresso. I’m kind of crap at it, but I still like making it. Tony always rails against my soggy biscuits, like that’s a personal affront.” He drops his papers on the counter and starts in on the coffee. “So I was looking for you.”

“Me?” Steve asks, and either he’s showing suspicion or surprise, because Banner gets a panicked look on his face.

“No, no, nothing major. Just that I’m trying to do some work on cell regeneration after extreme temperatures, and I wondered if you wouldn’t mind letting me poke at you a little bit and take some tissue samples, nothing really invasive.” He pours a shot for both of them and passes one to Steve. “I’m sorry. That makes it sound like I want you to be a lab rat. It’s totally okay if you want to refuse.”

Steve’s used to this. Most of the time he emphatically doesn’t want to be poked at, but since he’s anxious and there’s still ninety minutes to kill till Natasha gets there, he says, “Why not?”

He follows Bruce down to his lab, where he’s never completely comfortable. There are too many experiences of his own, too many of Bucky’s that he thinks about more than he wants to, and they all blend into a big slush pile of anxiety. Banner quietly takes what he needs, most of it hurts a little but he usually heals from these small cuts and scrapings in a day, and then Sam comes in, grinning as always. Steve looks at the clock and realizes Natasha will be here in a couple minutes. “Oh, okay. She asked you to keep me busy until she arrived.”

Bruce is sheepish, ducking his head down and smiling. “Well, the research is genuine. I would have asked you eventually. But she thought you might be anxious.”

“What are we anxious about?” Sam asks. “Please say it’s not bad.”

“She says she has some information about Bucky, and before you ask, no, she didn’t seem to want to share it with me till she got here.”

“All right. That’s good, right?” Sam says. “We’ve been in a holding pattern for too long, this’ll maybe put some of that supersoldier spark back in those baby blues.”

Not for the first time, Steve wonders how much the rest of them talk about him behind his back, worrying about his need to find Bucky, or just, as Natasha had put it, wanting him to be happy. He _is_ happy, or at least, he believes he’s happy most of the time, especially because of Sam, someone who helps him actually want to live in the world and not just float through life like a ghost, wondering why he’s come back. He goes to support groups with Sam and finds them helpful, and being involved with the charitable foundations for vets suffering from PTSD and traumatic brain injury and homelessness that Pepper has set up for Captain America has given him such a sense of purpose. Sam pushed him to get back to his art, citing its therapeutic value, and hooked him up with a group called Urban Sketchers, who meet and draw at locations all over the city. No one in the group gives a damn that he’s Captain America, they just like to see what he’s drawn -- though when he puts his sketches up on the blog, he uses the name Grant Stevens, because he’s now very cautious with his online presence. He’s really a captain of nothing and no one, hasn’t picked up his shield except in training for months, and he’s okay with that.

As if on cue, Natasha comes into the lab. She hands him a thick accordion envelope with papers spilling over the edges, takes a deep breath. “Some events blipped on Nick’s Hydra radar that he couldn’t fit in with the pattern of what we knew. Over the summer, there were a number of explosions, fires, and ‘accidents’ in locations all over the country. They seemed random, unconnected. Then there were the disappearances. It started to come together for him when various officials in Europe were alerted to what turned out to be Hydra AOs. With SHIELD being gone, there was no one to notice all this anonymous intelligence, the events in the U.S., happening in sequence, but then when they did, it fit together into a full picture.” 

“Bucky,” Steve says quietly. “How?”

“No one knows how long Pierce had...control of him. But the Soviets and then Hydra and Pierce would have to have given him knowledge of where to go to complete missions, who would help him accomplish that, such as the team he had on the bridge. He would have needed someplace to stay once out of cryo, legends--”

“Legends?” Sam asks.

“Identities, covers, what he needed to hide for any length of time. And he would have needed to know where to do all that in case of mission failure or to receive new orders. Where he could obtain weapons.”

“Pierce couldn’t have been that reckless to keep this kind of information around.”

“Well, not out in the open. Nick thinks that when Barnes went to Pierce’s home, he took coded personal documents. That somehow, he knew how to read them. It would be hard for him to travel on his own outside the U.S. with that arm, at least by plane, so that’s why Europe, Asia, South America, received anonymous intel. And as far as we can tell, not a single civilian has been hurt.”

She pauses to let all this sink in, but no one is looking at anyone else, they’re just staring down at Steve’s hands and the file folder.

“That’s not the real kicker, though.”

Sam draws his head back, gives her a skeptical look. “But wait, there’s more? Jesus. This guy is the gift that keeps on giving.”

“Sooo...some of the families of assassinations attributed to the Winter Soldier have received large sums of money wire transferred from offshore accounts that were finally traced back to Pierce and others high up. Nick wanted to tell you this when he first suspected it might be Barnes, but it took a lot of time to sift through and verify.”

Steve swallows hard, his knees so weak he feels like he’s his old self, flimsy and frail. 

Bruce pushes Steve into a chair and says softly, “He’s trying to atone.”

“Or he’s seeking very Old Testament vengeance, and the money’s just a...a cosmic joke,” Natasha says, shrugging.

Steve looks at all of them, their faces somber, wary. 

Putting his hand on Steve’s arm, Sam says, “It might be both those things. But I kinda wonder if it’s not something else. Maybe he’s doing it for you.”

Steve doesn’t say anything because he can’t say anything. Words are jammed up in his throat, his mouth is too dry to even unstick it. If he tries to speak, all that’ll come out is some kind of helpless croak.

“I was--” Tony Stark says as he opens the door to the lab, then stops dead. “Is there a team meeting and I wasn’t invited? Why wasn’t I invited to a team meeting? I’m gonna tell Mom you won’t play with me.”

Natasha rolls her shoulders, snaps her neck side to side. “Steve just found out his amnesiac assassin former boyfriend is trying to single-handedly wipe Hydra off the face of the earth.”

Tossing a handful of blueberries in his mouth, Tony says, “Good. Maybe he can take the remnants of those AIM fuckers out while he’s at it. Where can I contribute? Send me a PayPal link.”

Bruce throws him a speaking look, which Tony completely ignores. Then Bruce says, in his quiet, thoughtful way, “I think Steve’s just a little worried about what it could mean for his mental state. Or his ability to be helped.”

“I’m not.” Tony scowls. “I’m not at all. If he has the knowledge and resources to obliterate them, then more power to him. It’ll be my new charity. I’ll make t-shirts.”

Natasha stares at him, completely unreadable, her face a calm mask that Steve wishes he could mimic right now. Even Sam looks like he’s about to blow. “He could very well have killed your parents, Stark,” she says with uncharacteristic tenderness.

Something frays inside Tony, first he closes his arms around himself and then he hurls his packet of blueberries across the room. Which wouldn’t have been very dramatic except that it knocks over a couple of jars on its way down, and the sound of smashing glass seems to break him wide open. “You think I don’t _know_ that? You think from the first minute I heard about what happened in D.C. I wasn’t up for seventy-two hours straight getting every scrap of information on those motherfuckers and this famed ghost assassin of yours? That I didn’t end up in a broken Humpty Dumpty heap on the fucking floor that Pepper and Bruce had to try to put back together again, and I wasn’t railing like a madman and rending my garments because you were in the hospital and _almost fucking died_ for realsies this time?” 

He sucks in a huge, shuddery breath, waits a beat, and then exhales. Glares pointedly at Bruce. “Knowing you has changed my life, how brave you are to take something horrible that was done to you and do good with it. Look what they did to Pepper. There are monsters in this world, but there are also these amazing human beings, and yeah, okay, one god, so that kind of kills my analogy, but brave assholes who are willing to fight the monsters.” He turns his glare on Steve. “This guy, this friend of yours that you loved so much, was destroyed by someone and turned into a weapon of mass destruction. And maybe that weapon was turned on my parents, but that doesn’t mean the people -- no, they’re not people, they’re subhuman monsters -- who created the weapon get to be absolved of the crime because he’s the one who carried out the order.” He jabs an emphatic finger at Steve. “If I’ve learned one thing about you it’s that if you loved someone, then they must have been pretty freaking worthy of your affections. So if there’s even an atom of that guy still in there, then I can, I hope, somehow, someday forgive him. Because I have seen firsthand what it’s like for good people to be undone by bad through absolutely no fault of their own.” He pauses.

“And I’m not kidding about getting rid of AIM while he’s at it. Revenge is a dish best served cold, yadda yadda. I’m on Team Winter Boyfriend.”

Steve’s never liked Tony more, even if he knows everyone else is probably right to be concerned about what Bucky’s doing. “He’s killing people. That’s the crux of the problem. Playing judge, jury, and executioner.”

“Once again, don’t see the issue. Have any one of those people turned out to not be Hydra?”

Natasha twists her mouth. “Steve’s got the file, but as far as we can tell, no.”

“Then I’m not worried, and I don’t see why you expect Steve to be. He’s trying to protect you, Rogers. This is the one thing he knows how to do right now, the one thing that isn’t fucked up in his head so bad he’s probably wishing he could claw off his own skin or set himself on fire like one of those Vietnam War Buddhist monks. The more of Hydra goes away, the safer you are.” He holds his hands out in a what-the-hell gesture. “And maybe the safer _he_ is, because who wants a rogue agent running around like Batman. Couldn’t he have a trigger installed in his mind, that sends him into a killing spree again or a self-destruct sequence? He’d probably want to make sure no one could reboot him.” Huffing out a breath, he says, “Man, I am not the expert on spycraft here, why am I the only one saying these things? This is why you invite me to team meetings. I have no tact.”

Steve pushes up out of the seat and says, “I can’t deal with this. You can all stay here and talk about me behind my back.” Stumbles out of the room and to the stairs, until he gets to his place. He sits on the couch, head in hands, for a long time, until JARVIS quietly announces, “Mr. Stark wonders if he might speak with you.”

“Sure, let him in.” He looks up to see Tony peering around the door, his mouth drawn out in a ridiculous grimace. “It’s okay,” Steve says. “I’m not angry at you. I just don’t know how to deal with all of this.” He picks at his fingernails for a minute or two while Tony sits down on the sofa next to him, swigging from his bottle of weird green juice. “It’s kind of like I’m on this death march of failure. Over and over, I fail him. He didn’t think I could help him when he came to me that night in D.C. And so he does this instead.”

Tony thinks for a while, Steve can see the gears turning and his fingers are drumming a disco beat on his thigh.

“Here’s something I never told anyone. Like, I’ve never even told Rhodey or Pepper or Bruce the whole story. It’s my special gift to you. Use it wisely.” He closes his eyes, like there’s too much light and it hurts too much. “When I was captured and they wanted me to build them a weapon, there was a guy in that cave with me called Yinsen. He’s the one who saved my life with the whole heart full of shrapnel thing. And we got to know each other, we played backgammon, worked on the suit I was building so I could get out of there. He kept me from getting myself killed, because, you know, I’m me and I didn’t take kindly to captivity or being ordered around. He was my friend. When we’d talk, he’d say he was getting out so he could be with his family again. Just wanted to be with the ones he loved. But he made the sacrifice play at the end, getting himself shot while I escaped. And then I found out, as he lay there dying in front of me, that that had been his plan all along, because his family was dead and he could be with them at long last. He was...content.” 

He opens his eyes, looks at Steve. “Yinsen made the sacrifice play for me. For himself, too, but...I knew after that I was never going to make weapons to kill people like his family again. It messed me up, so if you think yours truly after the Chitauri was bad, you should have seen me then. Most of us don’t know how to be as strong as you are. Or this guy, before they did all that to him. This may be the only sacrifice play he’s got. You might have to respect that choice, because he seems to think you’re worth it, even if he didn’t know how to let you help him.”

“Peggy Carter said something almost like that back when he...fell.”

“Well, I’m not surprised. I grew up around her, you know. She had your picture on her desk the whole time she worked with my dad, right next to her husband and her kids. The little you, not this guy.” He makes a sweeping gesture at Steve’s torso. “This delectable specimen of manhood.”

Steve smiles despite himself. Somehow, Tony always makes him smile. 

“I’m not hitting on you, by the way. Even though I’m starting to think you’d do anything that moved.”

Steve looks him up and down. “I do have _some_ standards.”

Tony snorts. “My dad revered you. So did Peggy. When I was little, sometimes I’d be all rolling my eyes and mouthing blah blah blah behind him,” he flaps his fingers and thumb together, “because he’d say something about you and the Commandos and I’d be thinking, hey, I’m your own damn kid, what am I, chopped liver? You can’t tell amusing stories about your preternaturally gifted kid? I always thought everyone’s obsession with the past was stupid, and I just wanted to live in the future.” He gets up and goes to Steve’s icebox, pulls together ingredients for some kind of smoothie, takes bananas off the counter, which he then throws in the blender. Like it’s his apartment, and not Steve’s. For reasons he can’t identify, that actually makes Steve really contented.

Tony shouts over the blender, “So here you are, living in the future with all of us. And we know that you’re unhappy, Steve. We all do the best we can” --he hands Steve the smoothie, which isn’t green, thank God, it’s purple from the blueberries and strawberries-- “but there’s this sadness that hides behind your eyes most of the time. I was so happy that you found Wilson, just really happy for you, but there’s still that sadness. We all just want you to finally be happy here, in the future.”

“So this is what you all talk about when you talk about me?” It’s an echo of Natasha’s words to him so many months ago.

“Pretty much. So I don’t know. This might be the worst thing to happen to you ever, or it might be the best. If Hydra goes away, we all sleep a little easier, don’t we? And maybe he’s leaving you breadcrumbs. Maybe he’s lost, and he wants to be found. Won’t know till you try.”

It’s not like it’s a surprise that Tony is often incredibly insightful in a really irritating way, and yet it does surprise Steve every single time. They drink their smoothies, just sitting there, till Sam comes in. Tony gets up, takes his bottle of green stuff, and gives him a mock salute before he leaves. Sam watches him go, puzzled. He can probably feel that the air around Steve is changed.

He kneels down in front of Steve, takes his hands and closes his own over them. Sam’s skin is so warm, his touch is always so comforting. 

“You wanna know the damnedest thing about this?” Steve says. “If he’s really not hurting civilians, then I don’t care why he’s doing it. I actually think I’m with Tony on this. Morally ambiguous, questionably ethically challenged, self-serving Tony Stark. Although he’s constantly challenging my assumptions about him, which is just infuriating.”

“Never thought I’d hear that from you.”

“Trust me. You don’t think all this makes me wonder who the fuck I’m turning into?”

This didn’t seem to faze Sam in the slightest. “Okay, well, this is a day of firsts. You swearin’ now?”

“I’ve always sworn. Just not usually where people can hear it, and I reserve the really bad words for the worst times.” He laughed weakly. “I’m not the boy scout everyone thinks I am. I may have ideals, but I know the way the world works.” 

Sam presses his forehead to Steve’s. “You know, back when we started this thing, you mentioned something, I don’t know if you remember it, but you said that for both of you, it was like the war only happened yesterday. And that’s the thing -- you’ve had some time in the past year or so, even with the shit in New York, to learn how to live without a war. That takes all of us some time when we get back in the world. Barnes never had that time. So it seems almost kinda natural that he’d...carry that mindset still. That wiping out the enemy protects you, protects the world. He hasn’t had any time to move from war to not-war, and he’s had everything he knew or believed in stolen from him.”

After Bucky had come to him that night, Steve had told Sam all about the encounter. Sam had been mostly silent, and outside of teasing him about the note, he’d just explained what dissociative disorder was and gave Steve lots of reading material about it, and worse, about torture. It had been the last thing he’d wanted to read, but Sam had been right: understanding the process that Bucky had likely been subjected to in order to destroy him as a person and build a new one in his stead, understanding how he viewed his life, might be the only thing that helped him in the end.

But this intel today is a curveball that he hadn’t seen coming, even after everything he’d read, even after coming to really understand what dissociation meant. That Bucky had basically run from him, run from the possibility of being helped to instead...trying to help him in some messed-up way. “Do you still believe he’s not the kind you can save?”

“Naw, man. You’re a true believer, and those types always make everyone around them believe, too. Which sucks, but there it is.”

“Okay. So. I want to go after the breadcrumbs again.”

“Or maybe he’ll complete his mission and come to you.”

 

****

After Bucky left for basic training, Steve had been forced to leave the apartment he’d grown up in, no longer able to afford it. Bucky had offered to send some of his pay to Steve to help out, but Steve had landed a good job in a print shop, so instead he’d taken the ground-floor room that Mrs. McMahon down the block had let. 

Steve liked the print shop, they gave him enough hours that he could meet rent and have a few dollars left over, but enough time off for his art classes. He probably shouldn’t have been around chemicals all the time, but he loved the smell of the inks, pulling proofs off the line, setting type, the way the guillotine cutter sliced through towers of paper. And while the pressmen were sometimes a bit rough and tumble, they never judged Steve for his size or being 4F. 

It was good for him, too, because when he was working, he didn’t think about how much he missed Bucky, and how badly he wished he could be with him, learning to fight at his side. He spent time with Mrs. McMahon’s very elderly father, and she herself was kind of lonely, doting on him. All her kids were grown up with kids of their own, and her husband had passed during the Spanish flu epidemic, so Steve definitely sympathized with her.

Bucky wrote to him when he could, but it was not the same, would never be the same anymore. Sometimes, it felt like being at the shore, when he’d tried to swim and instead the waves, though seemingly gentle, had knocked him on his weakling ass and he’d sucked in so much salt water that he’d ended up coughing blood and scared Bucky half to death. It all seemed like a normal life, like a good life that he should be happy about, but there was an undertow slowly pulling him down. He couldn’t shake the blue moods that overcame him on days when he wasn’t working or at class. He lived instead for the time Bucky could come home.

“My friend Bucky is coming home on leave this weekend, and I wondered if it’d be okay if he stayed with me?” he’d asked Mrs. McMahon one day. “He could sleep on the floor, and we’d eat out so we wouldn’t have to put you out.”

She’d drawn her lips in a tight line and frowned. “That Barnes boy? I don’t know. He’s a charmer, but he’s also a real rascal.” Met with Steve’s pleading eyes, though, she relented. “All right. Just make sure you come in at a decent hour, I don’t want you carousing all night and then waking the whole household. If you don’t come in before ten, then don’t come home at all.”

When he got home from work, Bucky was leaning against the stoop, eating a hot dog. He grinned when he saw Steve, swooped him up in a hug, and then slapped him on the back. “Been a long time, buddy. Is it all right if I stay in your room, or did she give you the evil eye when you asked?” 

Steve straightened his tie. “No, it’s fine. We just can’t stay out too late.”

“I already got dates lined up. You’ll like yours. She’s sweet, and they both might be a little hot to trot, so don’t be shy.” He picked up his duffel and slung it over his shoulder. That familiar sharp jab of disappointment hit between his ribs -- every time Bucky had dates or tried to drag him on one, it just reminded him of how much he wanted Bucky to himself. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to meet a girl, this was the world they lived in, after all, and like Bucky had said, you can like both kinds of people. But he never knew how to square that with the overpowering desire for Bucky to be his alone. It wasn’t normal, it wasn’t right, but it was what Steve felt.

So he went out with Bucky, and Steve’s gal even seemed to like him a little bit, and he had as good a time as he could. If every once in a while he glanced up over dinner to see Bucky smiling at him, his eyes soft and content, he tried not to put too much store in what that meant. At the movies, Bucky put his arm around his date, tapping Steve on the shoulder every once in a while, like he was just checking. And as always, Bucky wanted to find somewhere they could go after, so Steve politely took his leave, even though his girl actually gave him a goodnight kiss he may have been able to push into some necking. His heart was just not in it.

He walked back to his room slowly, bundled up against the cold, certain that Bucky wouldn’t show up again till the morning, but as he opened the door, Bucky came rushing up behind him. “I knew you’d be a wet blanket.” But there was no malice in what he said, rather just fondness and a resigned acceptance, and he tilted his head back and looked down at Steve. “I got some hooch,” he said, pulling his coat back a little, “let’s go inside and get tight.”

“We have to be quiet.” It had been so long since he and Bucky had been together intimately, really it had been since before he went in, and he wondered if Bucky needed to be drunk now to do it with him. 

“As a mouse,” Bucky said as they slipped into his room, where he pulled the bottle out and grabbed the water glass from Steve’s bedside table. He poured Steve some of the bourbon while Steve took his coat and tie off, then took a swig himself straight from the bottle. Steve watched his throat move as he drank, felt his heart clutch a bit as Bucky licked his lips after. Once Bucky had lost his coat, jacket, and tie, he sat down on the bed and looked at Steve.

“Every time we go out, you’re like this,” he said, in a sort of scolding tone. “You scram as soon as you get the chance. Don’t want to go dancing, don’t want to go someplace and neck even with a girl who _likes_ you, don’t want to do anything. I haven’t seen you in so long, and soon I won’t be able to see you at all.”

“It doesn’t really feel like you’re here to see me, though. Before you left, you didn’t even come back from your date. I didn’t see you till the next night and then you were gone in the morning.” It was hard to keep his voice low so Mrs. McMahon wouldn’t hear them, his throat was strained, the words painful.

Bucky raised an eyebrow, sucked in a deep breath. “Are you jealous?” He took hold of Steve’s hip with one hand and drank some more. Steve hadn’t touched his glass.

It was question he hadn’t wanted to ask himself, that he toyed with sometimes at night when sleep didn’t come and he slipped into that place between waking and dreaming. But he was always honest, and he should be honest with himself this time. “Maybe. Of everything. That you’re 1A, that you’re not...that I have to share your time with other people, that being with girls comes so easy to you. I guess I am.”

Bucky pulled Steve to him, shoved his face in his chest, and after a few seconds of surprise, Steve put his hands on the back of Bucky’s head, wound his fingers through his hair. “It doesn’t mean anything. It never does. It’s just...I wanted to have a good time when I came home, this is the only time I’ll be here probably till we ship out. I’m already a corporal and they’ll probably make me a sergeant before I go. I’ll be in charge of people, I’ll have to be the one who has answers and I’m scared, Stevie, I’m really fucking scared that I’m gonna fail. And I’m scared you’ll keep trying to enlist and get yourself hurt. So I just wanted to forget it all when I’m here.” He tilted his head back, gazed up at Steve. “You’re so quiet and so strong I forget that you might be scared too.”

He took another drink, and pushed his face to Steve’s chest again. “I’m not str--”

“Don’t say that. You _are._ You can’t expect me to look at you and see anything other than how incredible you are.”

It had never occurred to Steve that Bucky could have withdrawn because he was afraid. That these things even crossed his mind -- Bucky had appeared, to his eyes, to glide through life, so perfect and beautiful. Steve leaned down and kissed the top of his head. “I know we have to get used to being apart. I’m not mad about that. After the war, we’ll have to be different people. I just don’t want to lose you now.”

“Remember how we used to talk about getting a car and driving around the country, going to California? Getting good jobs so we could go to Europe and you could see all the museums.”

Steve smiled. “Yeah. Too bad they had to go and have a war.”

“All those plans were you and me together. Just you and me. Maybe things’ll change, but you’ll still always be first to me. Nothing can change that.”

“Likewise, Buck.” He put his cheek against Bucky’s hair. He had never figured out why someone as handsome, smart, and charming could feel those things for him, never really truly believed it. Once he got further out into the world, Bucky would realize he didn’t want Steve that way, he would see it for what it was -- just two boys who were best friends once and had fooled around, who’d moved on since then. But he would take what he could get for now.

Bucky’s fingers were working at his belt. “I wanna suck you off.” Steve gasped as Bucky’s hand slid inside his trousers, pulled his shorts down and found his dick. “Think you can keep quiet?”

“You don’t--” and bit the harshly whispered words off as Bucky’s hot, wet mouth closed around his cock. He cleared his throat, grabbed Bucky’s shoulders to steady himself. “I’ll do my best.” They hadn’t been intimate for so long that it took almost no time before Steve found himself helplessly spurting into Bucky’s mouth, biting his lip to keep silent, watching stars burst behind his eyelids. When he got his bearings again, Steve dropped to his knees and pulled at Bucky’s belt and trousers. As soon as the ancient bedframe started creaking, they burst into muffled laughter, and Bucky slid down to the floor, holding a finger to his lips. He lay back and helped Steve shuck his trousers and shorts. 

He was already hard, and Steve cupped his hand around Bucky’s balls, thumb running up and down the shaft of his cock. Glancing up, he could see Bucky stuff his knuckles into his mouth, a low groan rasping out around his fingers. Steve loved doing this for Bucky, loved making him writhe and feebly kick at the rug with his heels, nuzzling at the crease of groin and thigh, licking him from root to tip until his hips snapped up and he exploded in Steve’s mouth.

When he was done, Bucky pulled Steve to him, wrapping his arms around him, hooking his leg over the back of his thigh. “Your landlady doesn’t enter without knocking, does she?” he asked sleepily, running his hands up and down Steve’s back. 

“No, of course not. She mostly leaves me alone.”

“That’s ’cause you’re a saint.” He sighed into Steve’s hair. “A very dirty, nasty little saint, but a saint all the same.”

“Just for you, Buck. Just for you.”

 

****

 

Sam orders in Thai, which Steve can’t get enough of ever since he finally had the chance to try it. Sam always tries to order something completely new in with the tried and true, because it’s fun to watch Steve’s face when he tastes something he doesn’t like. He loves the red curries, but thinks the green ones are the taste equivalent of trenchfoot, and anything with calamari is right out because he says it both looks and feels like something that came out of your nose; even if it’s well-cooked, it’s just well-cooked snot. 

Since he’s feeling blue, Steve wants to watch something tried and true as well -- his favorite movie so far turned out to be _Aliens_ , which shocked the crap out of Sam. He had really expected the original _Star Wars_ or _Empire Strikes Back_ , or maybe a screwball comedy or something animated, but no, Steve seems to really go for Ripley and a bunch of colonial marines duking it out with acid-bleeding aliens. It took him a while, but he realized why Steve imprinted on it so hard: the main character wakes up after a fifty-year cryosleep, has to come to terms with her new life in this unforgiving world where everyone she loved has died, and then kick ass against the nefarious corporate and military interests that put her there. If that ain’t Steve and Bucky’s story, he doesn’t know what is.

But it has to be the director’s cut, because his favorite scene is only in there, and it also kind of makes sense to Sam with what he knows of Steve’s love for Peggy Carter -- Ripley and Hicks, two badasses who never even get to kiss, declaring their love at the end by...telling each other their first names.

It’s probably the twentieth time he’s seen it because it was also really popular at the PJ base in Iraq, so he kind of mentally checks out, keeping his eye on Steve and waiting for a sign that he’s ready to talk about what happened today. About halfway to the end, Sam sees what he’s looking for, because Steve tucks his feet in under Sam’s thighs and huffs out a really put-upon sigh, not looking at Sam as though, somehow, Sam isn’t going to notice this. 

“You okay?” Sam asks, digging out the last of the Hazed & Confused ice cream.

“I don’t know if I know what I’m doing.” It’s such a flat, bald statement of self-doubt that Sam’s kind of taken aback for a minute, and he has to regroup. Steve hasn’t been like this since the earliest days of trying to find Bucky. Much as Sam likes to tease or make light of things, because that’s how he copes, it’s not always a safe bet with Steve.

“Well, I don’t know anyone who _would_ know what they’re doing in this situation. Because as I have mentioned a time or three hundred, this is fucking insane.”

“I didn’t expect him to go after them on his own. What if the government believes him to be a terrorist? If they catch him, how can I help him then?”

“We just gotta make sure we get to him before anyone else.” Sam takes a deep breath, getting ready to plunge in to the deep end he’s been avoiding for so very long. “So let’s say we find him. You want to help him and bring him here. Maybe he’ll want your help, but not anyone else’s. Or maybe he’ll want everybody else’s help, but not yours, who knows. But you have never dealt with your own shit, at all, and you won’t be able to help the guy without going through your own process.”

“I don’t--”

“Do _not._ ” He puts his hand up in front of Steve’s face. “Do you think I’ve talked to you so much about PTSD just for my own amusement or ’cause I love the sound of my own voice? Steve, man, you have never dealt with what happened to you. With thinking you were laying down your life and accepting death, and then waking up seventy years in the future. And then finding out the thing you laid your life down for was alive and kicking in the organization you worked for. And don’t give me that ‘at least I know what I’m fighting’ shit again. Whatever happens with Barnes, he’s going to need you to be a rock for him, and you will never be solid enough until you come to terms with everything that’s happened to you.”

Steve looks positively pissed at him, and he almost kind of wonders if he might just punch him. Not that he particularly wants to find out. He’s seen this kind of thing a hundred times, just how far denial can go, but all he wants is for Steve to admit he needs to take a first step. Everything’s a whole lot easier after that. 

“I go to meetings with you, talk about my experiences.”

“No, you talk about _other people’s_ experiences and show them support, because you’re a really nice guy who cares about them. But you clam up or deflect when it comes time to talk about your own.”

All he gets in response is a glower.

“Not gonna come back at me with some old-fashioned bullshit about how people of your generation pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and did what needed to be done and we don’t need no stinkin’ therapy and all that?”

Whatever’s simmering inside him seems to cool off, and he lies back on the couch. “No.” He finishes the beer he’s been nursing for a while, then rolls the bottle around in his hands. “You’re right. You always are. And Tony was just telling me that it’s obvious I am still sad about living in the future. But even...even if I get my head on straight, I don’t know how much of a rock I can be for Bucky. He was always _my_ rock.”

“Yeah, I believe that about as much as I believe in world peace. It’s a nice fantasy but it ain’t hardly gonna happen. You are such a dumbass about this guy and the way he saw you.”

Steve always hates it when he does this, which is partly why Sam does it. Someone’s got to keep him from getting his head stuck up his own ass, and that task has fallen to Sam Wilson. It wasn’t the job he’d applied for, and it isn’t the most desirable job in the world, but it comes with its perks.

Sam grabs Steve’s knees and pushes his legs apart, climbing between them on the couch. He walks himself forward on his knuckles, laughing at how fast Steve manages to get that self-pitying look off his face. It’s easy to forget sometimes, because he has such a tendency to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, how young Steve really is, how alive, but when he gets turned on, goddamn do you remember it. He goes from zero to sixty in two seconds flat, and that makes Sam growl low in his throat as Steve pulls him in for a kiss.

“Do you use sex to try to get me to do what you want?” Steve asks Sam, rubbing his thumb in circles over Sam’s nipple, biting along his neck in between the words.

Sam unzips Steve’s fly, grabs his dick and squeezes, strokes, squeezes, strokes. “Hell yeah. You don’t seem to behave much otherwise.” Steve palms him through his jeans, then puts his knee where his hand was, rubbing it back and forth.

“Shut up, then, and make me behave.”

 

Barnes sits in a café in Venice Beach, reading and nursing a cup of coffee and picking at his food. Some of the worst of the protocols withdrawal have evened out, some of it has yet to bottom out; eating is a chore, an obligation, but one he’s more willing to accept than others. 

Being out in public still carries its risks; though he’s cut out the tracker in his right arm, he’s not sure if there’s one in his left arm. While most of Hydra connected to Pierce and SHIELD burned in the wake of Insight, eventually the rest of the sleepers will wake up, receive his message, and he doesn’t know if he can eliminate them all before that happens. Or if he can eliminate them all, anyway. One-man armies are notoriously unsuccessful. But right now there’s comfort in sitting in the sun, being in the world, wherever and whenever he chooses, wearing the mask of a human he knows he’s not worthy of. 

He’s drifted as far from Steve as he can without going overseas, the paths that took him here marked by fire and death, which push him further still from Steve. His last known target was in Long Beach, so he’s stayed in California because he likes it here. It is nothing like Brooklyn, even less like Russia. He’ll find more of Hydra in the intel he’s collected, he’s sure, but for now he can rest, he can follow no orders and kill for no one but himself. 

Barnes has read Steve’s letter so many times the paper is falling apart; he holds it as a talisman, something that gives him strength and drives him forward. If there’s a longing need to respond, to call the number and say, _I’m ready to come home,_ it’s usually only in the edges of a dream, when he wakes with the memory of Steve’s touch on his skin and his voice in his ears. He knows there is no home for him, and no way for Steve to rescue him. That won’t stop Steve from trying, of course. Barnes knows there was something else between him and Steve, has seen it in those pictures and the films, but he can’t remember anything of his own. _There is a shore, and you will reach it._

He’s been to this café a few times, so he knows the exits, directions of foot traffic outside, how many staff in the kitchen and how many in the front. Steps to the street, steps to the parking out back. That’s why it’s such a surprise when a figure slips into the chair across from him. He looks up from his book, just to chest level and not the eyes. A woman, with red hair past the shoulders. His metal hand slowly pulls the knife out of the sheath in the cargo pocket on his left leg.

She says, “You can put it away. I’m not a threat. Yet.” Then she takes one of the pineapple chunks on the side of the plate and pops it in her mouth. “You don’t remember me, do you?” He lets his eyes slide up to her face: green eyes, full lips, sharp chin. The hair seems... _Garrote wire, stinger_. But he’s uncertain where.

“Actually, you’ve shot me twice. But you know, water under the bridge, bygones are bygones.”

He pushes the book to the side, puts one hand on the table, shifts his hips so he can get leverage on the table. She motions to the waitress, asks for a coffee. 

“I’m...sorry?” he says. She waves a hand. If she’s Hydra, she wouldn’t have sat down. So he assumes she’s SHIELD. “What do you want?”

“I’m a friend of Steve Rogers.” The waitress slides a cup and saucer on the table and pours her coffee. “Yum.” She looks at him over the rim of her cup. “An egg-white omelet? What, are you trying to watch your cholesterol?”

“I’m ninety-seven, so.” He shrugs.

“Are you making a joke? Because it’s not bad, all things considered.”

He pokes at the remains of his eggs. “Not a lot I can keep down.”

Her eyes scan him up and down. “You’re definitely not looking as...robust as you did when you hit us on the bridge. We have people who could help you with that. You’re in a kind of withdrawal, aren’t you? They used drugs or chemicals to wake you up?”

Some of her questions don’t seem to require answers. But the mention of the bridge is something, fills in a missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle in his mind. A ghost of a memory that was stolen from him. _That belonged to you, when you belonged to them_.

“Not that you’re not still easy on the eyes. I’d hit you like a target.” She smirks. He knows the tactic and respects her for using it; she’s trying to knock him off guard, confuse him. His weakness right now is that he’s a puppet without anyone to pull his strings, and she knows exactly what that means. Maybe even exactly what that’s like. “I bet you clean up real nice.”

“At any time you could tell me why you’re here.”

Her voice is dark and husky, but her laugh rings like a wind chime. “It took us a while, to see what you were doing, because we were...looking for other things. Steve wants to find you. He hasn’t given up on that. I’d give him and Wilson the rest of the day, at least, before they get here, and who knows how long till they find you.”

“But you came ahead and didn’t tell them.”

“They don’t have the skill set I do. I’m rendezvousing with them in five hours, at the scene of your latest work of performance art.” She scans the room, drinks her coffee. “I don’t know if you want to be found or not. I don’t really care, it’s your choice. I just want to make sure you get to make the decision. I know what it’s like to not have the choice in who you are.”

He believes that, somehow. “He can’t help me. It’s just going to hurt him to try.”

“I never much believed in love. And if I saw it, I thought it made people weak.” Barnes kind of likes her for thinking this way. “I can count on one hand the number of people I have cared for. But one of those people is Steve Rogers.”

“Is this where you threaten to kill me if I hurt him?”

That laugh again. “No, it’s more complicated than that. But yeah, I mean, if you do, I won’t like that. You won’t see it coming, just like you didn’t see this meeting coming.” She leans forward, puts her hands on the table. “Even when he didn’t know you were alive, he was outside this world, carried his sadness like that shield. I want to know what he’s like when he’s truly happy. Do you think you’re not deserving of forgiveness?”

That's unexpected. At first he doesn’t know how to react, it’s the first time since he saw Steve that night he’s been forced to think of such things. He glances away and shrugs.

“I can tell you that there are people in this world who believe we are.”

Though she says it matter-of-factly, her inclusion of herself in that is staggering. 

“I don’t want to hurt him more. It’s better if I stay away.”

She gets up, slides her sunglasses on. “That’s exactly what will hurt him the most.”


	4. Presque Vu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _We won’t survive this. But at least this time we’ll go together._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a handful of references to the prologue, [The Fire Ships](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1808722), in this chapter. You still don't have to read that to get them, but it provides some context.

Barnes sits on the air vent shaft of an ultra-high-rise in midtown New York, not all that far from Steve’s building. He’s setting his scope, listening to the action down below him and on rooftops of the surrounding area. They have no idea someone’s tapped in to their secured comms, and it’s entertaining, as cataclysmic events go. They’ve been at it for a little while, giving him enough time to gear up and find a prime location to keep an eye on Steve. Law enforcement’s set up a perimeter a few blocks away and staying busy with that, so he’s not particularly worried about them or the helicopter that circles just outside the battle zone.

“Tell me that doesn’t look exactly like the giant spider robot from _Jonny Quest_! I can’t believe no one else sees this.” He’s not completely sure of who the voices belong to, but he’s starting to pick out patterns based on when the comments are made and where the different Avengers are in the melee. 

“I can see it. But at least the spider robot didn’t have shielding. We’ve hit this with everything. Well, except for Thor’s lightning.” That one must be Barton, code name Hawkeye. Barnes can see him through the scope, down below and to the right.

Wilson, another voice he can identify, says, “If this is a _Jonny Quest_ cartoon, does that make Steve Jonny or Race Bannon?”

Someone snorts. “I think that one’s pretty obvious. Though, hey! Which one of us is Doctor Quest -- me or Bruce?”

“Whichever one of you figures out how to stop this freakin’ thing!” Wilson says, as an explosion follows him.

“I don’t think Bruce is working with his science brain right now.”

Barnes kneels down at the edge of the roof, gets into shooting position. He’s using the semi-automatic, because he needs speed capabilities. Barton’s the only one who might catch the motion when the casings eject, but Barton’s got something else to focus on right now.

“We could definitely use Thor right now. Did anyone even try to reach him?” 

“Sent him a message. Who knows if he’ll get it. He works in mysterious ways.” That’s Steve. Barnes has been following him for a while, waiting for the right time to reveal himself. 

Physically Barnes is much the same as he was when going after Hydra, but he finds himself with larger and larger spans of blankness, of fractured consciousness. And the vertigo, headaches, the inability to eat, are worsening, slowly but definitely. The woman, Romanov, had said they had people who could help, and he’s finally at the point where he needs to find out if that’s true. There is no one else to turn to at this point except Steve.

He’s spent the past few weeks tailing him. Carrying a large duffel with rifles, a grenade launcher, a few Hydra weapons, his combat gear, just in case there’s a threat to Steve before he makes contact. Barnes was prepared for the threat to be Hydra sleepers, however, not some kind of...giant robot spider thing. Even after reading about Steve’s battle with aliens in New York, this is past ten on the weirdness scale.

He watches as Barton fires another explosive arrow on...people? Robots? He’s not sure what they are, but they’re swarming down below and it won’t be long before Steve is overrun.

“If we can’t have Thor, then I’m going to try an EMP,” the woman says. Black Widow, her code name. “Hulk, clear me a path.” Her voice is followed by a roar. Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk. He wonders if they gave themselves these names or someone else did, the way Steve was christened Captain America by politicians.

There’s no TOC to speak of with these people, they’re all running around in a chaotic mess, and Barnes is kind of disgusted by the disorder. There’s no one to view the larger picture and provide direction. It’s one thing to be an operative on your own in the field, even have a team to run tactical with you, but it’s another when it’s a group like this, who should have direction.

Not that Steve is not leading them, because he’s Steve and that’s what he does, but it means he’s not watching his own back because he’s watching everyone else’s and he’s a suicidal bastard with no instinct for self-preservation. 

He may not remember much, but he remembers that. Those qualities were admired by other people, they made Steve a great leader and a superb soldier, but they also made it hard to love him. _Huh, that feeling’s...new._

 _You threw yourself on a goddamn grenade? Are you kidding me? What the hell is wrong with you, Rogers?_ Remembers that Steve would often run into the middle of a full company of the enemy with just his sidearm and a couple extra clips. Idiot. 

One of the ground troops, whatever they are, fires a weapon that looks an awful lot like the WWII Hydra weapons, and the entire edifice of the building behind Steve explodes. Romanov runs toward the giant spider thing and the Iron Man zooms up behind her. Barnes moves the scope back on Steve, just as there’s a huge whoomp! and crackling bolts engulf the robot, disabling it. Unfortunately, the ground troops are still swarming, and a handful are heading straight toward Steve. There’s no way Barton can hit them all. 

Barnes calculates windage, range, heat. Takes three deep, slow breaths. Steve, the moron, runs right, blocking his shots. _Red_. Factors in the dust from the rubble and other variables, waits for Steve to move. _Yellow. Yellow_. He traces Steve in his sights. Some of them move to flank Steve on his left. _Green_. Breathes, pauses at the exhale, and begins firing. Drops all of his own with each shot; the third, fourth, and seventh are Barton’s. Steve’s aware not all of them were dropped with arrows. Looks up at the rooftops. Even with his superior vision, he won’t be able to spot him up here. But Barton will know where the shots came from.

More blasts from the Iron Man’s hands, and the rest of the bad guys go down. Steve says quietly, “Which one of you dropped these guys? It was bullets, explosive rounds. Natasha?” He pushes one with his boot. “Not me, Cap. I got my hands full,” she says. Steve responds with a strained, “Area’s not secure.”

Barnes extracts the rifle, flattens against the roof. The Iron Man turns and heads in Barton’s direction. He’s followed by Wilson, with his wings. 

Barnes heads for his exfil but they beat him to it. The Iron Man -- Stark, he tells himself -- has Barton in tow. They’re faster than he’d assumed. “Cap, you better get up here,” Barton says. “Something you need to see.” “Roger that,” Steve responds, “on my way,” and then he hears Wilson grunt as he lifts Steve up.

Stark raises a palm toward him, and Barton nocks an arrow. That’s okay, Barnes isn’t going to sweat it, he figured there was a chance he’d have to reveal himself. As these things go, it’s an ideal situation: he can show them he’s not a threat by helping, they have weapons to make them feel secure. Barnes puts his hands in the air, holds the rifle up and out.

Wilson swoops in with Steve in tow. They drop to the roof and Steve stares at him, lowering his shield, taking off his helmet, and then takes a few steps forward. “Bucky,” he says. There’s a sudden change in the wind, like a dust storm swirling around them but with no dust. The air is displaced, crackles. Then a huge blond man slams down onto the roof. This must be the god, Thor. Barnes bends his knees to put the rifle down. As the others yell, “Thor, no!” he sends a lightning bolt directly at Barnes’s chest. It hits hard, knocking him backward, and he stumbles, trying to right himself. 

_You really fucked it this time._ Barnes stares at Steve as he runs toward him, regret and sorrow squeezing his heart till it slows enough he can’t feel it beating. Green to yellow to red. He staggers back, says Steve’s name, and then everything turns white as he topples over the side of the building.

 

****

On their way back to their quarters -- from one pub to another, Steve thought with amusement, since they had been billeted above one a few streets away -- Steve glanced over at Bucky and said, “You know, you’re going to have to stop showing up so disheveled. If a real officer sees you out like this...”

Bucky frowned at him, but didn’t say anything until they got up to their little room that smelled of stale cigarette smoke. As Steve pulled the blackout curtain back to open the window, Bucky said with a strained voice, “Do you actually hear yourself? The past couple days, you’ve been saying the same kinds of things -- a real officer, a better soldier...do you hear what you’re saying?”

“Well, I didn’t--”

“Uh-uh!” He put his hand up and scowled at Steve. As he took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, he said, “You’re still thinking like little scrawny Steve who can’t take more than one flight of stairs at a time. I saw that look on your face at the factory, when you were getting ready to jump. You didn’t know for sure if you could do it. And you still don’t completely believe you’re an actual officer, and that you have actual soldiering skills.”

“Yeah, but we’re working on that.” Before they’d left for England, Bucky had taken him out to learn pretty much every weapon he’d be likely to get his hands on, and he’d been learning to drive. It had actually been a lot of fun -- especially playing with the big toys like bazookas, even though the first time he’d used one he’d completely missed his target, had to learn how to adjust trajectory. He could not have had a better instructor than Bucky.

“It’s not just about guns and gadgets and blowing stuff up. Christ almighty.” He moved closer to Steve, shaking his head, a kind of bittersweet smile on his face. “You still don’t really believe in what you are now. It’s like you’re looking in the mirror and not seeing the real face in front of you, just the face you used to see.” Bucky put his hands on Steve’s waist.

Steve didn’t know how to respond; he couldn’t really argue with Bucky about that. He’d lived with limitations for so long that he hadn’t fully embraced what it meant to be almost unlimited. 

Bucky kissed the corner of his mouth, his temple, his chin, while he undid Steve’s tie. “Tomorrow. Oh nine hundred. We’re gonna train all that out of you and make you start believing on the inside what you can do on the outside.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re a pain in the ass?” Steve kissed him, open-mouthed this time, hungry. They hadn’t been together in so long, and he was alive to the possibility, here, now, together again despite the worst odds. And Bucky was physically improving, even if he still had nightmares -- though they seemed less frequent, less intense.

“I didn’t get to be a sergeant for nothing, goof.” Bucky unbuttoned Steve’s shirt.

They’d gotten in so late the previous night that all they’d had time for was unpacking a few things, washing up, and then sleeping. Steve had had to throw the thin mattress on the floor because the bed was far too short for him, and it was less uncomfortable to have his feet hanging over the edge there than be cramped up on the bed. He’d lain next to Bucky’s bed, falling asleep to Bucky’s hand tracing figure eights on his shoulder. But now Steve wanted more than just that, he _needed_ Bucky in him, around him.

He wound his fingers through Bucky’s hair, shoved his mouth hard against Bucky’s, kissing, biting, licking. Bucky pulled his shirt up out of his trousers, fingers scrabbling at his belt. “Jesus, Steve, you’re like a boiler. Is this part of the serum?”

“I think so, yeah,” Steve said, tracing his tongue around Bucky’s ear, darting inside. This was one of Bucky’s weaknesses, it made him rubbery with pleasure and he moaned, trembling underneath Steve’s hands. Steve sucked his earlobe, laughing low in his throat at the strangled little noises Bucky made. 

In response Bucky bit Steve’s earlobe, his neck, the curve of his shoulder, sliding his hand up Steve’s chest and pushing the fabric away, then thumbing his nipple. “You’re so different, your body is...do you still like the same things?” Bucky asked as he locked his mouth over the other nipple. 

“Uh, oh yeah, God yes,” Steve said between panting breaths. Though he’d kissed a few of the USO girls, even engaged in a little heavy petting backstage, he’d basically had nothing but his fantasies and his hand since the time he’d seen Bucky on furlough. 

Steve had never grown confident about saying what he liked or didn’t like -- no problem at all with actually _doing_ those things, but discussing it made him bashful and uncomfortable. Bucky, on the other hand, had never had that problem, and now he was simultaneously kissing Steve and telling him in great detail what he wanted Steve to do to him. 

He tugged at Bucky’s trousers, unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it back from his chest, and finished unzipping his own fly. Steve loved it when Bucky fucked him from behind slowly, luxuriously, buried deep inside him and pressing his hand to the back of his neck, his mouth against his shoulders. Bucky always wanted it as deep and hard as Steve could give it to him; he would straddle Steve and drive himself down onto his cock over and over, kissing Steve while he jerked him off, or he would lie back, hook his legs over Steve’s hips and press Steve roughly to him.

As Bucky rattled all this off, Steve laughed, giddy and thrilled and so, so hard. He didn’t care which of those things they did tonight, he just wanted Bucky however he could have him. Bucky pulled his trousers and shorts off, dropping to the mattress on the floor and tugging Steve down with him. “Wait, wait,” Steve said, and reached over to rummage in his kit till he found what he was looking for. “I swiped some lanolin from one of the USO girls when I went over to say goodbye.” He grinned sheepishly at Bucky.

“Pilferer,” Bucky said, gazing at him with adoring eyes. There was nothing that Steve found more arousing than that look on his face, it made him feel so wanted, so...extraordinary. “You must have been hopeful.” He threw one arm across Steve’s back, slid the other under his right arm.

“For you, yes. Always.” Bucky spread his legs and hooked them over Steve’s forearms, pulled Steve to him, dog tags tangling against Bucky’s on his bare chest. “God, Bucky, I’ve missed this so much.” Bucky arched up as Steve pushed inside him, his sigh like music, his lips glossy and red. 

Bucky clutched at his back, begged him to go faster, harder, and though Steve wanted to go slow, to revel in the feel of being inside Bucky again, he thrust his hips more and more rapidly, the small _huh huh huh_ puffs of breaths from Bucky’s mouth hurling him over the edge as he came, shuddering into a heap atop Bucky. Steve had held back on touching Bucky, wanting him to last so he could fuck Steve. He rolled off, finally taking his trousers off, and his shirt too while he was at it. Bucky knew what he yearned for, and he kissed the back of Steve’s neck as he pushed inside him. 

It was exactly the way Steve remembered it, even with this different body, exactly the way he wanted it. Bucky murmured his name over and over in time with his thrusts, reaching around to take his cock in hand. Then he burst into laughter, the gusts of breath tickling Steve’s neck. “I can’t believe you’re hard again already. Is this a benefit of being a supersoldier?” Steve tried to look over his shoulder to meet Bucky’s eyes, but Bucky was laughing too hard for him to see, his head hanging down and his hair like silk over Steve’s back. 

“One of those unforeseen ones, I suppose,” he said. He shoved his hips back hard, knocking Bucky off-balance. “Now get on with it.”

That only made Bucky laugh even harder. “God, you’re a piece of work, you know that?” But he shut up and moved with Steve’s hips again, his hand slipping up and down Steve’s cock. Steve didn’t last as long as he’d hoped, climax rippling through him in great, engulfing waves, over and over as he felt Bucky thrust harder and harder against him, calling his name repeatedly until he came, too, his soft moans an exaltation of pleasure.

When Bucky eventually pulled out of him, he licked Steve’s come off his palm, slid his fingers into his mouth and sucked them clean while staring at Steve with depraved glee. “You taste different, too. But I like it.” Grabbing his handkerchief, he cleaned Steve off, then himself. “How am I gonna keep up with you now? I’m just a regular guy,” Bucky said, grinning wickedly as he slid up next to Steve. 

“I guess we’ll have to practice a lot, build up your stamina.” Steve brushed Bucky’s hair away from his forehead. “And anyway, you’ve never been a regular guy.”

“Mmm. Tomorrow, then. Now is the time for sleep,” Bucky said, voice drowsy and honey-sweet. After a few minutes he mumbled, “You want me to get in my own bed?” Steve needed to hit the head down the hall, but he would wait till Bucky was asleep.

There wasn’t a lot of room on this mattress for the two of them, but Steve reached up and grabbed their blankets. “No. Stay here with me.” Bucky rolled onto his side to spoon around Steve, almost automatically, though Steve had been about to do the same to him and he almost head-butted Bucky. He smiled to himself, turned over, and let Bucky coil along his back just like they’d always done. 

 

In the morning Steve showed up as he’d promised, Bucky taking him into a nearby building that seemed to have been largely abandoned during the war. He was astonished to find that Bucky had turned the huge open area of the ground floor into something resembling a gym with an obstacle course -- crates, ropes, heavy equipment had somehow all been arranged by Bucky to test his mettle. Steve imagined that Bucky must have had to bribe quite a few of the fellows on the squad to help him with this.

“If you’re gonna be a weapon, then you need to think like one. Powerful, capable, and dangerous to the enemy. And if you’re gonna be a leader, then no more doubts.” They’d started off simply, just hand-to-hand fighting where Bucky tested his most basic skills, but gradually built up to pushing the limits of strength and endurance. “You’re not just holding up dames and motorcycles this time,” Bucky had goaded as well as any drill sergeant. By the end of the day he had Steve up on rooftops, jumping from one building to another. “Don’t think about it. Just go ahead and do it.” 

They kept at it during the days, meeting up with the other fellows in the squad in the evenings to hammer out roles, learn their specialties, and prep for operations. Steve had found the shield he wanted to carry -- Bucky had been nearly hysterical with laughter when Steve told him about Peggy shooting at him -- and Stark was working on his uniform. He’d learned to drive everything, including the motorcycle he wanted to use in the field. And God help him, Steve had never been happier in his life.

There was precious time to spend with Peggy, with Bucky. People had a newfound respect for him, he’d proven himself. In a way Steve felt he was, at last, fulfilling the promise Dr. Erskine had seen in him so long ago. In a few more days they would be back on the Continent, in the thick of the fight, but at present he was filled with a light and joy he had never known before.

And Steve realized he was falling further and further in love with Peggy Carter. They’d forged a bond back at Camp Lehigh; she had looked at him with black-diamond eyes and knew who he had been and what he could become. He would catch the way she smiled at him sometimes and wonder if she saw past the war with those sparkling eyes, envisioned a future for them together. In the diffuse hours of night when he was too keyed up to sleep, he puzzled, too, over how he could fit Bucky within that future. Steve didn’t know how, but there had to be a way, some geometric figure where all the lines of his heart could connect.

One night Bucky had asked him, as they lay half-asleep, Bucky’s arm dangling down and his hand on Steve’s shoulder, if he was in love with Peggy.

“I think I am, yeah. I guess I have been since I first met her.” Steve wondered if Bucky was trying to give him the chance to back out of their own affair, be the chivalrous one. 

“She’s an incredible woman,” Bucky said. “You deserve someone like her. Do you want to marry her?”

“I think so, yeah. But it’s not something we can really think about right now, you know? The war’s far from over. It’s not as if I can bring my English war bride home,” he said, not trying to be sarcastic but still coming across that way, and he blushed with embarrassment.

“She’ll wait for you, I can see it in her eyes. She’s every bit as in love with you. That’s why she shot at you.”

“So we’re basically five. I should retaliate by dipping her pigtail in the inkwell?”

“You could _try_.” 

“It’s not something I should be worrying about, anyway.” He was growing too sleepy to keep the thought on a straight line, so he rolled over on his side, pressed Bucky’s hand to his mouth. “Don’t really want to go anywhere I can’t go with you, too.” Steve wasn’t even sure if Bucky heard him or if he was asleep.

Their next to last night in England, Steve came back to their room after a working dinner with Peggy. Bucky put down what he was reading, sat up, glaring at him with narrowed eyes, and Steve knew he was about to catch holy hell, but not sure what he’d done this time to deserve it. “Ran into one of your SSR unit guys from Lehigh,” he said. “He told me you threw yourself on a grenade.”

“I--”

Bucky slammed his hand down on the bed frame. “You threw yourself on a goddamn grenade? Are you kidding me? What the hell is wrong with you, Rogers? I mean it was one thing when we were kids to not have the brains God gave a fly and pick fights with kids who were bigger than you, but it’s another thing to have so little instinct for self-preservation that you’d throw yourself on a grenade.”

“It was a dummy.” Steve shrugged. “It was a test.”

“I think we both know what the dummy is here. Jesus god, Steve, how are we gonna keep you alive if you do that sort of thing in combat? You yourself pointed out that a bullet’s still a bullet and a grenade is still a grenade. You’re not indestructible.”

He knelt down in front of Bucky, pushed himself between his knees, and wrapped his arms around his waist. “I was trying to protect them, the other fellas and Peggy. I didn’t think, it just happened. I just wanted to protect the others. You of all people should understand that.”

Bucky shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “There was a fellow in our company, he was standing around a fire with a couple others, just shooting the breeze and trying to get warm. He reached inside his jacket for a piece of candy, and accidentally pulled the pin on a hand grenade he had in there. When he realized what he’d done, to save the other guys’ lives, he ran around the side of a truck, trying to get his jacket off. The shrapnel from the grenade hit one of the others in the neck and severed his jugular. Fortunately this was near the doctors, who had come running when they heard the explosion. They saved _his_ life, at least, but that punched his ticket home.” Bucky ran the backs of his fingers along Steve’s face. “Stevie. Terrible shit like that happens when you’re not thinking. You can’t put yourself in harm’s way like that. All this...training, all this stuff we’ve done, it won’t mean a thing if you do stupid shit like jumping on a grenade.”

“Well, that’s what I got you for, right? To make sure I’m never that stupid again.”

Bucky clutched at him, bunched Steve’s shirt in his fists and pressed his mouth to Steve’s neck. “You’re damn right.” He sighed, breath feathering across Steve’s skin. “God, I can’t leave you alone for ten minutes, can I?”

He never, ever wanted to be without Bucky again. “Not generally, no.”

“Guess that’s settled, then. You can’t go out unsupervised.”

Steve kissed him, long and soft and wet, tracing the edges of Bucky’s beautiful mouth with his tongue. “Not without you.”

 

****

 

When Steve gets to the roof, there’s Tony, palm up, ready to fire if necessary, and Barton with an arrow nocked. Sam’s folding his wings. About twenty feet away is Bucky with arms raised, holding a rifle up, wearing the full kit he wore on the helicarrier and the bridge. 

_You came home. You came back to me._ Steve’s heart is bashing against his ribs, breath stifled in his lungs as they grasp for something to take in. Then the air stirs around them, electricity snaps and hums, and he thinks, oh hell, no one told Thor about Bucky. There’s a crack of thunder, and then blam! Thor lands with his characteristic power, sees the rifle that Bucky is trying to set down, and sends a lightning bolt right at him, hitting Bucky in the chest and knocking him backwards. Tony, Barton, and Steve all yell, “Thor, no!” at the same time, but Steve has the reflexes and speed and is already sprinting toward Bucky. He staggers, the rifle clatters to the ground, and he looks at Steve in abject terror as he plummets over the side of the building just as Steve’s able to get his arms around Bucky’s legs, but they’re both falling, falling, the air whistling in his ears. 

There is only so much a supersoldier can withstand, and a fall from this far up is still a fall from this far up. 

_We won’t survive this. But at least this time we’ll go together._

He couldn’t save Bucky seventy years ago, and he can’t save him now, but this time Steve won’t be alone to try to carry on without Bucky, they’ll both be splattered over the streets of the city they grew up in, and somehow that seems fitting, instead of one or both of them mutilated and broken at the bottom of a canyon in the Alps.

Then Sam is there and he’s got hold of Steve’s left leg, while Steve clutches at Bucky. The weight is too much though, Sam can’t get any lift no matter how hard he flaps his wings, he’s twisting and turning trying to stay aloft but they’re sinking, not at quite the same rate of speed but they’ll still end up mangled on the pavement of a high-rise canyon in Manhattan. He holds on to Bucky with one hand, twists up to grab Sam with the other. Sam is bellowing, “Shit! Shit! Auurrggghh,” as he’s falling with them, and Steve thinks, this time I’m letting go. I’m not taking Sam with us. He lets go of Sam’s wrist, Sam’s still working hard to get lift so he doesn’t recognize it for a millisecond. The asphalt rises up to meet them. Just as he lets go, Stark is there and sweeps Steve to his side, Bucky dead weight beneath him, and Sam whoops and speeds up next to them, pulling Bucky up level by his waistband.

They bring them back up to the roof and fold Bucky gently to the ground. Sam immediately goes into pararescue mode, he’s feeling for a pulse and checking his airway and all the other combat medicine procedures, muttering, “Shit, shit, shit.” Steve kneels down next to him. When Sam’s hand touches the metal arm, he shouts, “Fuck, that’s hot! Don’t touch his arm.” After a few seconds of checking him over, he looks desperately at Steve and Tony and says, “We gotta get him to a hospital, _now._ He’s in cardiac arrest. This is bad.” He begins compressions.

“Can you--” Steve starts to ask Tony, but before he can say anything Tony’s reaching in for Bucky, Sam standing up and back. But Steve is panicked, terrified. “If we take him to a hospital, they could find him!” 

“Not if I bring him in,” Tony says, and takes off. 

Steve turns to Sam, who pulls his goggles down and grabs Steve under the arms. “I’m not as fast, but we’re right behind them, Cap. Don’t worry.” Steve tells Barton to see to the mop-up, almost as an afterthought.

Everything happens faster than Steve can really grasp. They’re rushing Bucky into a ward by the time he and Sam get inside, and Tony’s got the doctor he wants on the line. It reminds him of taking Fury in, but he has even less control now than he did then. Sam’s reeling off medical jargon to the personnel, and then Steve is engulfed by the blur. All he can see is Bucky, his own failure to rescue him once again. 

The next thing he knows is that Tony’s shaking his shoulder. “Hey, big guy, come back to us. It’s gonna be okay.” He tears his gaze away from the window where they’re working on Bucky. Tony is, weirdly, smiling. “He’ll be all right. Heart’s already beating just fine. You supersoldiers and your inability to actually die.”

“He’s okay?”

“Well, no, he’s not _okay_ right now, but he’s alive and his heart is working. Best heart guy in the city is in there right now, too. He’s the guy who fixed mine.”

“I thought he was going to die, just when I found him again.”

“I know, I know. But hey, here we are.”

Steve finally snaps out of it. “Thank you, for everything.”

“My pleasure. If you’re worried about the government or the press, don’t. Everything’s sewn up tighter than a hamster’s ass. You might not have noticed when you came in that this part of the hospital is named after my parents, so I have a certain amount of sway -- board of directors, too. And you can trust the personnel here. I promise.”

“What about the others?” For the first time, Steve notices Sam’s not here. “Is Sam okay?”

“They finished cleanup, and they’re in the waiting room. Thor’s a blubbering wreck. He quote unquote esteems you above all men. It’s destroying him that he did something to hurt your friend.” Tony waves his hands. “Not that I’m jealous about that or anything.”

It never fails to amaze him how Tony can make anything about himself. “Anyway, they have him stabilized, now what they need is some information. Whatever you can give them. I know there’s not a lot.”

He lets Tony steer him away, looking back over his shoulder the whole time. Steve wearily tells them everything he knows about _Bucky_ , but he can’t tell them much about the Winter Soldier. They very pointedly don’t ask about the arm. When they’re done with him, Tony takes him to the private room he’s arranged for Bucky, although they haven’t wheeled him in just yet. 

Doctor Patel joins them to explain the situation, most of which doesn’t even penetrate Steve’s foggy mind. After a few minutes, the doctor focuses on Steve’s face, and just comes out with it: “What the hell happened to this guy?” Steve’s always liked people who don’t beat around the bush. 

Tony says quietly, “It’s a really long story that I’ll tell you later.”

Patel raises his eyebrow, but nods. “He’s been...tortured or...experimented on?”

“Yes,” Steve says flatly.

“And I take it that his ability to heal so quickly is somehow related to our good captain here?” he asks, glancing at Tony, who nods. 

Patel wipes his hand down his face. He has that look, the one any decent human has when they find out what’s been done to Bucky. “That metal arm.” He pauses, trying to collect his thoughts. “Lightning can cause metal on the body to superheat and burn. The scarring on the shoulder and chest were bad before, but there are burns where the metal’s...fused with his skin. But that healing ability is helping here, too -- if he continues to improve at this rate, the burns should improve eventually. At least, I hope. I've never seen anything like this before.”

Steve realizes his hands are shaking. He clutches at his shield, willing his muscles to still. “Can I see him? He...he might be very upset to find out he’s in a hospital when he wakes up. Destructively upset. I’m the only person who can really deal with him.”

“He’s coming out of it now. But I would very much like it if you could convince him to stay. He was in extremely bad shape before this event, and I’d like to help him. We’ll push a lot of fluids and nutrients into him while we can. He’ll need follow-up care, too. Sometimes patients’ hearts seem fine, but then they slowly get worse, like a watch that hasn’t been wound.”

“I’ll do my best,” Steve says. “But he has a lot of reasons not to want to stay.” Steve thinks of that chair again, the implements on the table next to it. 

Tony, bless him, senses that Steve is on the verge of losing it, and takes the doctor by the elbow. “Come on, I’ll tell you the whole terrible story.”

Steve slips into the room as they’re wheeling the bed in, and watches while they hook up Bucky’s IV and monitors. He wonders how long that’ll last once Bucky wakes up. He sits next to the bed, takes Bucky’s real hand, holds it between his own, careful of the tubes. 

He’s a grimy, sweaty mess, but he can’t be bothered to care. Bucky might be a mess, too, but he is so beautiful to Steve’s eyes it hurts, like staring directly into the sun. He is a star, a constellation, a galaxy, collapsed to the ground inside that broken body.

Gradually Bucky stirs, eyes darting back and forth beneath the lids, his mouth forming words Steve can’t make out. Then he sits bolt upright in the bed, eyes wide open, shouting, and Steve hurls himself forward, gently pushing him back, saying, “Bucky, it’s okay, it’s okay. It’s Steve, I’m here with you, you’re all right.” They struggle for a few minutes, nothing like the struggle they had in his apartment the night Bucky came to see him, because Bucky is weak and confused. Eventually his eyes focus on Steve and he calms a bit, chest heaving but still flailing at Steve’s arms.

“Hey now,” Steve says, trying to be as soothing as possible. He doesn’t feel very soothing right now, though, he feels like a useless, hysterical wreck who can’t do Bucky any good. “Just breathe, take some deep breaths. You’re in a hospital. No one is going to hurt you.”

Bucky’s eyes dart back and forth, trying to take in the room and no doubt assess the best method of escape. He tries to peel the IV off, but Steve grabs his metal hand. Bucky jerks it away, but it’s possibly malfunctioning, because he doesn’t appear to have full range of motion or power. At last he meets Steve’s eyes, and there’s a gleam of rage in them.

He’s not really breathing so much as gasping for air, but Steve can see he’s trying to slow his heart rate -- his shooter training kicking in. “The hospital’s safe, I’ve made sure of that.” Steve realizes he’s looming over Bucky, which probably isn’t helping him calm down, so he sits on the edge of the bed, asking with his eyes if that’s okay. Bucky doesn’t nod, but he doesn’t move away, either. “It’s my fault. I never told Thor about you, and he thought you were a threat to me. He didn’t understand you were putting the rifle down.” Steve’s honestly not sure if Bucky’s even listening to him, but he keeps going anyway, hoping the sound of his voice might help ground Bucky here. “You went unconscious and...fell. I tried to stop you but I couldn’t, though Sam and Stark caught us in time. You were in cardiac arrest. Your heart stopped.”

“Have to get out of here.” His voice rides on sharp, rough gravel. “Now.”

“No.” At Steve’s firm tone, Bucky scowls, staring at the opposite wall.

“I want my tac gear. My weapons.”

“They had to cut it off you and it was burned anyway. Your weapons are safe. You need to stay here. You’re healing from the lightning but you’re in really bad shape underneath that. We can help you. Isn’t that what you came here for?” Steve asks harshly. He supposes tough love is just as worth a try as the kid gloves, which so far haven’t worked at all. Bucky only scowls harder, but there’s a slight relaxation in his arms. It’s not hard to figure out that’s what he wanted -- it’s not like Bucky came here to be with him.

“We _will_ help you.”

Bucky continues to stare at the wall, and Steve is cold, so cold inside watching Bucky, this hollow altar on which he lays his love. He remembers a boy with dark, shining hair and flashing blue eyes, such a quick and easy smile, a hug for his ma when he got home from school, a hand up for his best friend when he was too weak to walk from his sickbed to the toilet. Remembers a tortured soldier so strong and brave and true, who tried to hide the lead sky behind his eyes with a sunny grin and a witty remark. Neither of them are evident in this James Buchanan Barnes in front of him, so broken and bloodied and bowed. 

“Can I call you Bucky? Or would you prefer something else?”

All he gets is a scoff in return. 

“I know you said you weren’t him. That you didn’t know who you were. So if you don’t want me to call you Bucky, I won’t.” Bucky merely shrugs in response.

Steve takes a chance and puts a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, leans close to him. He is lost here, casting around blindly for the right thing to do, knowing that though he has an endless capacity to love, there is nothing and no one here who wants that from him. He rests his forehead against Bucky’s shoulder, whispers, “Thank you for today. For saving me. You always had my back.” Bucky flexes his hands, the metal one whirring and clicking. He just keeps opening and closing his hands, as if he’s hoping to find something, some kind of answer, in his palm each time his fingers uncurl.

“Someone has to take care of you.” It’s a truer response than Steve could have hoped for. Steve rubs his hand up and down Bucky’s real arm.

“I’m so sorry, Buck. I know you don’t want me to say that, but I am just so sorry. For letting you go, for everything. I should have known you were still alive. I should have looked for you. This time I’ll do better, I won’t let you down. I promise you that. I will do better.”

When he looks up, Bucky’s eyes are closed, he’s swallowing hard and his hands still curl and uncurl into fists. “It’s gonna be okay, Bucky. It’s gonna be okay. I’ll bring you home, and it’s gonna be okay.”

 

Sam’s been standing by the window of the room for a few minutes when Stark strolls up. He glances over at him, and the way Stark gives him a little chin jerk lets Sam know that he’s also worried about Steve needing backup, since Barnes is a highly flammable substance right now. 

They watch them silently until Tony says, “You know, not that I mean to diminish your relationship with Rogers, but Jesus, I’d actually rather see them having wall-smashing, earth-trembling reunion sex than this. This is just... _horrible_.” 

Sam can’t disagree. You didn’t have to be a lip reader to understand the words that Steve was saying to Barnes: the _I’m sorry_ s and _it’s okay_ s and _please_ s. And Barnes wasn’t even making eye contact with Steve, just staring straight ahead while Steve spoke assurances.

“Man, I knew this guy was seriously jacked up, but this is...he is so much worse than I realized. I knew guys when I was a PJ, see ’em now sometimes, they are the best damn soldiers when they’re on rotation. Time comes and they take off the uniform, turns out there’s nothing underneath. That’s what this guy is. He’s been falling off that cliff for seventy fucking years.”

Tony presses his fingers to his eyes, as if it’s all too much even for him and he’s exhausted his arsenal of snappy observations. “You did a really amazing thing, though, going after them like that. In the time it took me to process what was happening you were already in the air. You had to know you couldn’t lift them both.” 

“First thing you learn as a PJ -- you gotta have no qualms about laying down your life for someone else’s. That’s our creed: that others may live.”

“And it was Steve.”

“Yeah, it was Steve.” He looks over at Tony. “You did a pretty big thing yourself. Saving someone who could have done what he did to your family.” He turns his attention back to Steve for a few more minutes, then taps Stark on the shoulder. “I feel like a voyeur here, and I think he’s got this. He’ll be okay.” They stroll back to the waiting room.

Something shifts inside Stark, he squares his shoulders and waves his hands around like he normally does when he’s talking. “I gotta say, I wasn’t expecting the guy to be so hot. Even as rough trade as he looks, he’s still, you know, _wow_. Do you think it’s, like, a basic requirement to be incredibly good-looking to be a supersoldier? If so, you better watch your ass. They might be coming for you with sinister-looking vials and syringes.” 

Sam shakes his head. “Thanks, I think.” 

“No, seriously, what’s your secret with the My Little Pony eyelashes? You use a curler?” Sam just waves Tony off. If he was in a better mood, he’d be flipping shit right back at Stark, but today of all days he is not up for that.

Everyone stands up when they get to the waiting room. It’s nice, closed off and comfortable and since Tony’s pretty much sewn up the hospital, they’re all by themselves. Thor is still a wreck, Banner’s back to normal size and dressed, and everyone seems to be doing their best to comfort the distraught god of thunder. 

Sam sits down, still shaky, while Tony gets everyone up to speed. After a minute or two, Natasha sits down on the coffee table in front of him, and threads her fingers through his. She smells of gunpowder and sweat, her hair is dusted with ash and pieces of cinderblock, and she looks so incredibly beautiful he almost can’t stand it. “Are you okay?” she asks, and motions for someone to bring him coffee. 

“I just...if Stark hadn’t been there, I would have lost them. Can you imagine what that would have done to Steve if he’d survived again and Barnes didn’t?”

She holds the coffee out to him, doesn’t answer because she knows there isn’t an answer. “Stark wasn’t the only one who saved them, you know.” He gazes into her eyes the color of the deep sea, and shivers. Now that the adrenaline has worn off, he’s a crumbling ruin, and Steve has Barnes at last and it’s the most horrible thing Sam’s ever seen and all he can think is that Steve won’t survive this any more than he could have that fall. This thing feels Doomed with a capital D.

Clutching Natasha’s hand, he sips his coffee and says, “Thanks.” He tries to shake it off, pull himself back together for Steve, because he’s gonna need it from here on out. “Sorry we left you back there to pick up the pieces.”

She gives him that “piece of cake” single-shoulder shrug and head nod, slips her hand out of his. “Is he coming back with Steve?”

“Who knows?”

“Well, if he is, we should get Steve’s apartment ready, get some food in for him, clothes, that sort of thing. Banner was talking to the doctors and he thinks he can do some things for Barnes so he won’t have to come back here. Stark wants to get a look at the arm, if he can tolerate it. I think we might also want to get the guest quarters ready, in case Barnes doesn’t want to stay with Steve.”

Those are all really good suggestions, and they help Sam focus. “Yeah, that’s great.”

Before she gets up, she grins at him. “So, how was your first day with the Avengers?”

“There better be hazard pay, is all I’m saying.”

Natasha takes him back to the tower, where he’s been staying when he’s in New York, and orders in Chinese. Outside of her dealing with a few phone calls related to the day’s events, they don’t talk, and Sam realizes that’s one of the things he likes most about her -- she seems to have an innate understanding of what people need from her. He supposes it’s that whole Black Widow thing, which Steve has told him about, but he also believes she’s just got really, really good perspective. She kisses him goodnight, a light kiss that stays completely inside the boundaries of chaste but that leaves a tingle on his lips all the same.

In the morning they bring clothes to the hospital, where Steve has of course spent the whole night in a chair by Barnes’s bed, Steve’s hand on Barnes’s arm. It looks like Steve hasn’t even washed up; Sam imagines him sitting by the bed for all those hours, refusing to move, and hopes he at least got some food or had one of the nurses bring him something. He remembers when his mama had chemo and he would sit by her bed just like that, holding her can of Ensure, the only thing she could stomach, and bending the straw for her. The nurses always let him stay overnight, and snuck him meals from the cafeteria so he didn’t have to leave. 

They’re both asleep, so Natasha tiptoes into the room, puts the bag on the floor by Steve’s feet, and creeps back out, which impresses the hell out of Sam because she’s woken neither of the supersoldiers up.

They wait around together, Natasha regaling him with some of her more bizarre spy stories, until Steve comes looking for them, his hair all spiky and cricking his neck like the old man he is chronologically. “Hey,” he says cheerily, like they haven’t just had the most ridiculous twenty-four hours in the history of the planet. “Thanks for the clothes. They’re going to let me take Bucky home today, and all he has left is his boots, so this is great. I, uh, promised him we could replace his tac gear.” A quick glance at Natasha, because of course she has all the answers. She nods, which appears to fill Steve with relief. Sam’s told him that people in these kinds of situations hold on to small things, familiar things, and with his identity so fractured, of course he’d want to keep hold of something he believes represents what he is. It’s nice to know Steve at least listened to him _one_ time.

“Is he talking yet?” Sam asks.

“Not much, no. He’s still not making eye contact. I don’t know if it’ll get better once we’re out of this environment or not.”

“We took the liberty of getting your guest room ready. Shopped for you,” Natasha says, and Steve smiles, really smiles, for the first time since the attack. “Clint put Barnes’s weapons in your guest room. And I had an idea, for when we get home. Something that might help him adjust to the change in his circumstances.”

Steve folds them both within his giant arms for a hug, and then kisses her on the cheek. “Let’s see how it goes.”

“Like, what? I don’t get a kiss on the cheek?” Sam asks, and Steve grins, dips down and kisses him hard on the lips, knocking his teeth against Sam’s.

Then Steve turns away, and Sam really, truly comprehends for the first time, seeing the light that shines in his eyes, that Barnes may have been the shattered, lost soul they said they were rescuing, but it’s Steve who’s being saved here.

 

When they first reach the tower after an interminable car ride where the screeching whine in Bucky’s head keeps time with the rolling bap bap bap of tires on pavement, they’re welcomed in by an AI voice coming from someplace he can’t identify, and the hair on the back of his neck stands up. Before they get to the elevator, Romanov surprises him by asking, “Would you like to debrief?” He surprises himself even more by instantly answering, “Yes.” He thinks back to their first meeting in L.A., and he remembers that ancient knowing in her eyes. It feels like something he needs to do, the operative is compelled to do. She directs someone to take his things and tells Steve they’ll meet later.

She takes him into the elevator without looking at him, letting him adjust to the confined space on his own, then to a room that appears to be an office. There’s no obvious one-way glass, but Bucky assumes Steve will be listening and something in here is for watching. Steve’s hovering woe at the hospital tells Bucky that he can’t do anything else _but_ listen. At least Steve’s not here in the room, with his endless litany of _I’m sorry_ s and _it’ll be okay_ s that shriek and bounce around in Bucky’s head like ricocheting bullets. 

The coffee she gives him is excellent, she asks if he wants anything else, but he shakes his head. Makes tea for herself. Romanov then asks, “What would you prefer to be called? James, or Bucky? Something else?”

Jesus fucking Christ, why does everyone keep asking him that? he thinks, and then realizes from the surprise on her face that he said it aloud. “It makes no difference,” he says, knowing how caustic he sounds but not caring enough to stop.

“All right,” she says evenly, as imperturbable as she was in L.A. The flat mask of her face is actually calming. She has no _I’m sorry_ s for him. “Steve’s always called you Bucky, so I will too.” _This will be the last time anyone calls you by this name._ He shakes his head, drinks the coffee, refocuses. Yellow to green. The screeching dies down to a whine.

The questions she starts with are about his objectives against the Hydra operations, simple facts, dates and times, how he read the intel. But when she asks about names, about the dead, he’s surprised again. They think he murdered them all. 

“Most of them ate their own guns. They knew who I was, they knew they were exposed...it’s standard procedure. The individual doesn’t matter.”

She nods. “And the ones who didn’t kill themselves when faced with the Winter Soldier?”

“The what?” he asks. Pain in his head, accompanied by the snap of electricity. He digs the nails of his right fingers into the palm.

“That’s the name they gave you. You don’t recognize it?”

“Why would I?”

“Some in the intelligence community referred to you that way. Most people thought you were a myth.”

It’s fucking ridiculous. He doesn’t even know what it means. “News to me.” But he closes his eyes, waits for the noise to die down.

It does when she gives that wind-chime laugh again. “What did they call you when they took you out of cryofreeze?”

“Nothing, mostly. The asset. Or just ‘hey, you’ in Russian.” The words are forgotten now; his languages are disappearing piece by piece. He’s glad of that, since they were never his to begin with and he didn’t want them.

She smiles and says, “Ey tui.” Bucky’s starting to like her. He’s forgotten what a smile feels like, but he thinks that’s what his mouth is trying to do. “How did you learn Russian?” Not a debrief question, but she seems curious.

“I don’t know. I remember...” white room white coats grey faces. “A screen and flashing lights. That’s all.”

She takes a deep breath, drinks her tea. “All right. Getting back on target. What happened to the ones who didn’t kill themselves?”

“They were a direct threat. Operatives who came after me. I didn’t have a choice except to engage. So they couldn’t get to Steve, or any of you.” She writes that down, but while she’s scribbling, he hears a noise behind the wall, something a normal person couldn’t. So Steve _is_ watching them. It must be a relief to him, that Bucky hasn’t been off on a murder tour of the United States like he’s thought. Steve was always about having clean hands; the dirty jobs were Bucky’s. Steve believed it was just about the work, not about something rotten inside his best friend.

That topic done, she asks him if it’s all right to discuss his captivity. His hand goes clammy, his mouth dry, but he nods, and she asks about techniques they used on him, listing things off in a clinical way. Her detachment helps, but when she gets to the questions about threats of sexual assault and execution, he finds it harder to answer. Those he can’t separate from himself the way he can the stun batons or the canes or the sensory deprivation or that fucking chair. “They...liked to threaten me. Then walk away, laughing, when I was most afraid.” He’s never admitted to fear before. He took no pleasure in his missions, had despised the way his masters had taken pleasure in his pain. But that had never done him any good, it was inefficient. “I didn’t care when they threatened to execute me. I would have preferred it. Once they figured that out...”

She cocks her head sideways and scans his face. “Who did they threaten instead?” She’s been there before, then. Did she do it to someone, or did they do it to her? Romanov can see he has trouble answering, so she gets him some more coffee. When she sits back down, he rubs his hands on his legs, breathes like he’s got sights on a target. Red yellow green. His throat aches from speaking more words than he’s said in a lifetime. 

“Not my family back home. I believed they’d captured Steve. Should have known it wasn’t him. It worked for a while.”

“Until you knew he’d died?” _Your friends, the ones who abandoned you, are all dead now. No one knows you any longer._

He nods. “They redacted the date on the paper, so I never knew when. But after that I didn’t much care what happened. I was supposed to protect him and failed my mission.” He hasn’t thought of this in...he hasn’t ever thought of it. Something written in the mist on a window, or dust motes floating in a thin shaft of sunlight. Disappeared with time.

“And then you woke up here.” She puts her pen down, slides back in the chair. “We can finish another time and go over that intel you collected. I know it’s been difficult to talk about these things. But this has been helpful. It gives us a baseline.” For what, she doesn’t say, and that’s fine with him. He’s never had an interest before in what they did with his reports. She leads him out of the room and there’s Steve, who silently falls in step next to him, guiding him to the apartment.

 

After they were settled and Steve showed him around, he left, ostensibly to run errands, he said, but Bucky knew it was to allow him to look around, acclimate himself. Bucky discovers he likes the balcony, with the brilliant blue winter sky at his fingertips and no walls closing in on him. Spends way too much time in the shower, sometimes just sitting on the tiled floor, letting the warm water run in rivers down this wretched body that still feels frozen inside. It’s kind, soothing, especially on the tender burns of his left shoulder that too slowly heal. But mostly he stays in the bedroom, reading, listening, twirling his knives around in his fingers, waiting for the shriek in his head to die down after a memory surfaces or he wakes from a nightmare.

It’s like that for days that blur into each other: Steve makes enough noise to let him know he’s leaving, and then comes back in the evening, offers him food, goes back out until it’s time to sleep. He mostly leaves Bucky alone; has said maybe fifty words to him. The walls make Bucky’s skin itch, he keeps searching for potential exits, potential threats. The balcony becomes his refuge from that, from the closing of the world around him. It’s the weight of Steve’s hope, the sharp serrated edge of his expectations against Bucky’s fragile skin, that makes him want to hide. He waits for his soul to awaken and turn over inside this body and open its eyes, but it never happens.

Yet he came here for a reason, he reminds himself, and he either wastes away or he gets fixed, one of the two. When Steve comes back in one night, Bucky’s decision is made for him. He’s on the hallway floor, the room spinning so fast he can’t find an anchor point to look at. Can’t breathe, just swallows and swallows the spit that’s rising up, hoping to avoid puking. Doing nothing is no longer an option.

“Hey,” Steve says gently, the way you talk to a stray dog you’re trying to coax. “What’s wrong? What can I do?” Kneels down next to him, his face twisted, terrified.

He whispers, “Vertigo. I don’t want to puke.”

Steve crouches, slides his arms under Bucky, and carries him to the bed. 

“I’m not your fucking bride.”

“Never marry anyone as nasty as you, so simmer down,” he says and sets Bucky in the bed, runs to the kitchen and brings back a big bowl. “You can puke in this.” He turns off the light and then goes to the window to draw back the curtains, saying, “It’s a gorgeous night out.”

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut, says, “If I start, I can’t stop.” Breathes, breathes. Sights on target: red yellow yellow green. He can do this. Steve smells so good, though. Focus on that.

“Is this what’s been making it hard to eat?” Steve sits down gingerly on the edge of the bed, but he keeps his hands to himself. 

“Don’t know. It’s just hard to eat.” The spinning slows, a merry-go-round whirling lazily. Opens his eyes again. Steve’s looking around the room, and even in the dark he can see the holes Bucky’s punched in the walls during nightmares or just fits of rage.

“Banner thinks he can help you. If you’re willing to give it a try.” Steve’s eyes are so soulful it makes Bucky want to laugh. But that’s uncharitable when he’s being so kind.

“Nothing to lose.” He waves a hand. “Ice?”

“For your head? Or to suck on?” For some reason that makes his heart thump double-time. 

“Head.” Steve comes back in a few minutes with an ice pack and puts it gently on his forehead. The room is more or less stationary now. 

“There might be...needles involved. Drugs.” 

“I’m used to it.” He knows they think he’s a ticking bomb, that an errant touch or sudden event will trigger him. And he can’t really say for certain he isn’t and they won’t, but after all these months, he wants to think he has more self-control than that. Focus breathe sights on target. “I’m damaged goods, but I can do what needs to be done.”

The skeptical look he gets in return is kind of funny, even he will admit. Steve can hear him screaming at night, has endured the periods of nonverbal shutdown at and since the hospital, knows the way he avoids eye contact and seeks open spaces at every opportunity. Wilson’s probably given him extensive reading about traumatic stress, dissociation, all the things Bucky’s read about himself and knows that he’s doing but can’t stop it for the life of him. Red yellow red. 

“Do you -- when you go out during the day, are you with Sam?”

“Yeah. He doesn’t want to crowd you.” That’s considerate. “I’m involved with a lot of charities, so there are plenty of things to do. Yesterday I was in Washington, visiting Peggy.” He stares at his hands, obviously trying so hard to let Bucky take that in without the burden of his sad sad face. Steve has never had a poker face, everything about him is written so large you could read it from a thousand yards out without a scope.

“I didn’t realize she was still alive.” Now what he said in the letter makes sense. How strange it must be for the few still left alive to see them return from the dead, when they themselves are at the end of their lives. Although he wonders, still, if Steve has ever fully returned. _If I’m honest with myself...I was ready to give up._

“She forgets a lot. Some days are good, some are bad.” Bucky wants to touch Steve, comfort him because he so clearly needs it, but he can’t yet, doesn’t know how to offer that. Who could take comfort from a monster?

“That’s awful for you,” he says instead, because he does believe this, he does care what happens to Steve. He rescued Bucky from the burning helicarrier when he didn’t have to, could have just left the ship to do its job. Glancing away, because it’s just so depressing to see Steve’s crestfallen face, Bucky says, “You’ve got two people you loved in the world who don’t remember enough of you.”

There’s a hiss as Steve draws in a breath, but Bucky keeps his eyes on the windows and the deep night sky beyond. “You remember that,” Steve says, his voice quavering.

“I saw pictures in some of the books about you. Might be fucked up, but I can recognize that much.” He pauses, trying to find the words to frame what he wants to say. Yellow. Green. “Were we lovers?” The weight of the noise crushes his skull.

“Yes.” It must be hard for Steve, to talk about this and not touch him. In the hospital he’d kept his hands on Bucky all the time and it had burned like acid.

“With Agent Carter, too?” Bucky turns, finally, to look at him.

“We never had the chance.”

Christ, he’s such a selfish prick, to keep hurling anguish in Steve’s face when Steve is trying so hard to be kind to him, but he can’t help it, he just can’t help it. “I don’t remember any of that.” 

Steve is quiet, holding back. “Has there been anything more? You said that night that you saw pieces of things, random memories.”

How does he tell anyone what it’s like? Memories make sense to them, they have order, definition. His are scattered scraps that he can’t make coalesce into useful images. He thinks of the kaleidoscope his mother had given him as a child, how it tumbled the glass inside it to create beautiful patterns. There is no beauty in the tumbling fragments of his memories. They float and fall through the black emptiness of his mind, and he reaches for them over and over but they stay just out of his grasp.

“I remember more and more events, things people said. But they have no feelings attached to them. No meaning.” He flexes his hands, open and closed, open and closed. Red red red. “That’s what I can’t remember -- what he was like inside, what it felt like to be him.” All these years with his voice imprisoned, now freed and he can’t seem to stop talking even though he knows the words are probably killing Steve. “I know you want me to remember. You want me to be him again. There’s no way I can be that person you need me to be.”

“At first I thought I wanted that, it’s true,” Steve says evenly, and Bucky has to give him credit for being so strong, much stronger than he’d thought. “But whoever you are, or are going to be once things are better for you, I’m just glad you’re here. All I want is for you to be safe, to help you find your place in the world.” He slides his hand across the bed, near Bucky’s thigh, but not touching. “If that place means being my friend -- only my friend -- I’d like that. But you have to do what you need to for yourself.”

Bucky sits up, takes the ice pack off his forehead. He doesn’t know what to say to that.

“Would you like to have a bite to eat and then we can go see Banner? If you’re up to it.”

“I’ll try.” He doesn’t know why, but Steve makes him want to try. Bucky follows him to the kitchen and sits at the island, watching him. 

Steve makes scrambled eggs, adds a ham steak for himself, and while he’s putting the plate in front of him, Steve asks, “What do you do all day when I’m gone?”

“Mostly sit out on the balcony if it’s not snowing or raining, or curl up in a catatonic ball on the bed. Sometimes sit in the shower forever. Stark’s water bill is going to be terrible.”

That he can make light of things appears to help Steve relax, like he’s finding what he needs to see in Bucky again. Maybe Bucky is finding that in himself, he doesn’t know yet.

“You don’t have to stay here. You can go up on the roof if you want to, there’s a huge garden up there, and you have free access throughout the building so you can go wherever you want. If you wanted to leave, too, you could do that.” His voice breaks on the last word.

“Might try the roof, then.” He finishes his eggs. “You can tell Romanov I’m ready to show her that intel.”

“That’s good, she’ll be happy to hear that.” He finishes his own meal, then puts the dishes in the dishwasher and leans against the counter. “I wanted to tell you...I wanted to say that I didn’t care that you went after Hydra. That it didn’t disappoint me to find out what you were doing. I wanted them dead, all of them, for what they did to you. But I was still relieved to find out you hadn’t--”

“Murdered them in their sleep?” He’s more snide than he wants to be.

“I guess.”

“The threat of the weapon can be worse than the actual weapon itself.”

Steve’s face twists, his eyes mist over. “You remember that.”

“You wrote a class report on the English navy. Fire ships.”

“Yeah, Buck. I did.” Shit, now Steve looks like he’s going to cry. 

He’s never had the answer to his question, still doesn’t know if he was always a monster or if he was made that way. If he was created to be the threat because he was already a dangerous weapon. The memories returned to him don’t tell him any more about that than the history books he’s read. “Did they suffer? Did Pierce...was his death clean?” His hands shake when he asks the question. Knows what he wants the answer to be.

“I don’t know about most of the rest of them. I only know what Natasha told me, that Fury shot him twice in the chest. That he would have died watching the helicarriers burn.” 

“It’s not enough. He should have suffered more.” The years spent at the end of Pierce’s leash can’t be given back to him, but it would be...at least more equitable.

“I thought so too, buddy.” Steve has never wished suffering on anybody. How much he must have changed after Bucky had died.

 

It’s easy to like Banner. He’d invited them into his own quarters, not the lab, and he has a very soothing if messy presence that Bucky takes an instant liking to. It’s hard to believe that someone so gentle and even could turn into a monster created out of rage, and it makes Bucky wonder, as Banner draws his blood and checks his vitals, if that means he hadn’t been a monster either when Zola had got hold of him. 

Everything he does he explains, anything that can cause discomfort he warns for. It’s obvious that Bucky’s condition worries Banner, but he says gently, “What I want to do is reinvent the protocols they used on you in order to make you better. And if you’re okay with it, Tony will help us.” Bucky just shrugs, and Banner and Steve exchange a look, but he doesn’t really care one way or another. He came here hoping they could fix him, so he’s going to let them try.

“First things first, though,” Banner says. For him that means easing the withdrawal symptoms, building his nutrition, and everything else -- the arm, his memory -- can come after that. It seems as good a plan as any. He gives Bucky a couple of injections, just vitamins, he says, and it doesn’t really hurt.

As they leave, Steve hesitates, his hand hovering at the elevator buttons. “Would you...would you like to meet Sam?” He sounds so much like his young self then, awkward and self-conscious. His mouth parted, lower lip gleaming pink in the hallway light, and Bucky can’t stop staring at it. Why can’t he remember what it was like to hold it between his teeth, run his tongue along it, suck it into his own mouth? He would have done that, must have done that. “Bucky?”

“Tapped out of talking to people for now. Maybe tomorrow.” Something warm in the pit of his stomach, flooding out through his groin. He hits the down button, down down he needs to go down now, right now. 

“It’s okay. I’m sorry. I pushed you too hard.” The elevator opens and he hurls himself inside, knocks the back of his head against the wall to quell the noise. “It felt so good to talk to you again and I got carried away.”

He doesn’t say anything on the way into the apartment, can’t say anything because the words are frozen inside him like breath inside the cryochamber. Red, red. No target. Rushes out to the balcony, hand spasming with the need for a weapon. Inhales exhales. What are these thoughts and desires scratching with sharp little rat claws in the back of his mind? 

Steve slides the door closed behind him, then puts a throw from the sofa over Bucky’s shoulders. 

“You don’t have to baby me,” he snarls. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“I don’t _have to_ , I want to. There’s a difference, jackass.”

Bucky rolls his eyes so hard it actually hurts. He wants to crush the railing in his metal hand, but it’s been sluggish, unresponsive at times since the lightning. Settles for clutching the frozen railing with his right hand instead, cold that pierces his bones. Steve just stands next to him, hands in jeans pockets, looking out at the city beneath them.

Eventually Bucky brings his head up and meets Steve’s guileless, worried eyes. Sees a tiny broken boy bent over in a slum alley, hand the color of an apple’s flesh splayed against a wall, knuckles like ground meat, holding himself up and blood drip drip drip from his mouth to the filthy cobblestones. Sees the boy, now a frail young man, hand with raw and purple knuckles clutching the lip of a tub, bent over with teeth stained and smeared with red, drip drip drip onto the cracked white tiles beneath your knees as you clean him up. Sees that young man so much bigger and stronger, standing straight and tall while blood races down the side of his face, from underneath a blue sleeve along his fingertips drip drip drip onto the sparkling crust of white snow at your feet. Sees the man, still improbably young, both of you still so young, with blood that blooms across a uniform, blurring white stripes to red, all red, and his eyes that drip drip drip with misery when he looks at you. None of them your fault, he tells himself, except the last one, the one that almost killed him. All of them your fault for not protecting him.

“I’m so sorry,” Bucky whispers. 

“For what?” Steve asks.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Bucky asks, and laughs, brittle and unpracticed.

Steve shakes his head. “It never would have happened if I hadn’t failed you in the first place. But it’s good to hear you laugh. I’ll keep saying dumbass things if it’ll get you to laugh some more.”

“Jesus, you’re a piece of work.” He lets Steve steer him inside, settle him on the couch, while he goes to make coffee.

Steve hands him the cup and says, “Decaf. The last thing you need is something keeping you awake tonight.”

He holds it in his hands, warming up. “Coffee is so good now.” It burns his tongue but that’s okay. It’s another discovery: that he has tastebuds, that he can appreciate something and isn’t eating or drinking solely for survival.

“I know! None of that horrible chicory stuff.” Steve sits next to him. “Wait till you try tea. It’s nothing like that swill we drank in England during the war.”

“The automats are gone. I found that out a long time ago.” Steve looks at him doubtfully, like he wonders how Bucky would know that. “I escaped. Twice.”

Steve freezes, cup hovering in the air.

It’s not something Bucky wants to remember, but it had come back to him as soon as he got back to New York. They’d punished him severely both times. “The first time was in London. I was waiting for extraction, and I saw something I recognized. I think it was Big Ben. Near the building where we had our war room. But I couldn’t go inside. Didn’t know why but I wanted to. So I kept walking, and I found the pub where we’d been quartered. The rooms had been turned into flats. They found me, of course. I kept ahead of them for about forty-eight hours, but...”

Steve’s lowered his cup, but his hand trembles. Bucky knows he’s thinking of the hell that would have rained down on him from his brutal masters. “The second time was in New York, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. It had changed so much. Nothing that I was looking for was there. I got confused and disoriented enough that they caught me right away. Walked over the Brooklyn Bridge, but never got much farther than that.”

“Trackers?”

“That’s one reason I had to get rid of as many of them as I could. There are sleepers and splinters. They’ll come after us.” He puts his cup on the side table. “I’m really tired now. I need to go to bed.” When he stands he puts his hands in his pants pockets, staring at the far wall. “Sam’s probably waiting for you.”

“I texted him earlier that I wasn’t coming by tonight. It’s okay.” Thinking of Steve texting people almost makes him smile.

“Do you love--” He doesn’t know what he wants to say: do you love Sam? Do you love me still? Do you love the memory of a person I can never be again? It hangs on the tip of his tongue, useless.

_Do you love_

_Do you_

He shakes his head and goes to the bedroom.

Sleep eludes him, like an aware target. He’s spoken more today than in seventy years combined. But what stuns him most is that he’s asked questions. He’d forgotten what curiosity tasted like. To want to know something and believe you had a right to ask for it. Emotions, desires, are terrifying, only weaknesses to be turned against you.

Except Steve would never do that. Or allow anyone else to do that. Bucky doesn’t know how he knows this, but it’s a firm conviction, a knowledge seeped into the marrow of his bones.

After a few hours of flopping around in the bed, he gets up and walks down the hall, standing at the door to Steve’s bedroom. To see if he’s all right after everything that happened this evening or if Bucky has just laid more anguish on his shoulders. A memory clutches at his gut: out in the field, watching Steve sleep, curled on his side, a warm spring sky above them. Stroking Steve’s hair while he slept and Bucky stayed awake on watch, rifle in the other hand, never happier. They were all of them filthy, exhausted, hungry, and in enemy territory, following a handsome lunatic around knowing each day could be their last.

But he’d been happy then. It’s an essence, a vapor he can almost taste, almost feel. 

_Do you love_

_Do you_

Steve still has those soldier’s instincts of the field, because he wakes up and rolls over, sees Bucky leaning against the door jamb. He doesn’t move or speak, waiting for Bucky. What had he ever done to deserve such a friend, in the face of all the low things he’s done to him?

He wants to say something, but he’s used up his meager supply of words. Waits for language that won’t come, and Steve waits with him. Then he turns and walks away.

 

In the morning, Steve is in the kitchen making breakfast, hasn’t left the way he usually does. When Bucky comes out to get his cereal and a piece of fruit, he’s surprised to find he wants more to eat than that. Steve glances over his shoulder, says good morning -- he was always such an impossible morning person -- and asks him if he got any more sleep last night, how he feels. 

Would someone call their long conversations a breakthrough? Probably, but Bucky still feels like a shadow, stunted and contorted. He shrugs in response, so Steve doesn’t push it, always allowing him a choice in what he wants to do. Bucky wishes he could tell him that he appreciates it.

“Bruce has some ideas for you. If you’re up to it, he wants you to go by his place.” He slides hash browns, eggs, and bacon over to Bucky, pointedly avoiding looking Bucky in the eye, which nettles him, though he can’t even begin to imagine why. Maybe he just wants Steve to be the leader here, point him in a direction, give him orders. 

“And I’ve got some appointments, so I’ll leave you guys to it.” He wolfs down his food, smiles, and says goodbye. 

Eventually Bucky finds his way to Banner, who seems happy to see him. He starts in with his gentle questioning, easing him into it. At one point, while he’s gathering a bunch of papers, Banner turns to him and says, “You know I’m not exactly a licensed physician, right? Steve told you that?”

Bucky says, “You know I was experimented on by evil mad scientist Nazis, right? I don’t know how many of them were licensed physicians, either.” Banner blinks. Shit, he said the wrong thing again, there’s no need to be such a dick to someone who’s just trying to help. 

But then Banner chuckles, points a pen at him. “You’re absolutely right. Well, I’ve done a lot worse things to myself than I could ever do to you, so don’t worry about that. And you have the right to say no to anything you don’t want.”

They spend the rest of the day talking about what little he remembers about the procedures to wake him up, what his symptoms have been and how they’ve progressed, and Banner’s research into the vertigo and headaches. He’s pleased, though, when Bucky tells him he was hungry enough that morning to eat more than bland food. Banner softens requests to do physical things to him, like injections or taking blood, by bringing him coffee. As rewards go, it pleases Bucky.

Banner asks him, at the end, “Would you be willing to try something with me, not anything medical, but...kind of woo-woo? I think meditation might help you. One of a few things I do to keep my...issues at bay.” 

“Why not?” Bucky answers, even though he has no idea what woo-woo is supposed to mean.

When they’re done, Bucky lets the AI -- still giving him the creeps -- guide him to the roof to explore, and he’s definitely not disappointed. Calling it a garden is an understatement; it seems to go on forever and it’s like being in the nicest city park he’s ever seen. Even in winter, it’s beautiful. He wanders through its terraced sections, discovers that there are two main segments, one for the employees and one for the private residences, separated by a wall of hedges and bamboo. He finds a bench under a tree and sits, hands stuffed in pockets. As much time as he’d spent in a frozen tube, he should be bothered by the cold, but today it’s not so bad, maybe because it’s open space and he’s...free.

His dreams the night before, once he’d finally found sleep, weren’t the usual nightmares of falling or being torn apart by a freezing river in the Alps. No men in white coats with grey faces taking pleasure in his agony. Instead he’d dreamed of a merry-go-round and a summer night under a veil of stars, the taste of whiskey on his lips and the sound of Steve’s voice in his ears. For the first time his dreams recalled emotions, but he doesn’t know what to do with them. Doesn’t know how to bring up the subject with Steve without that anguished face, so full of hope for something Bucky can never be.

Steve had had the chance to mourn Bucky when he died. To have memories, at least, and hold that inside himself, no matter how he might have grieved. How does he tell someone who had that what it’s like to be alone for years and years, the horror of having nothing and no one inside your mind, even to grieve their loss? They had stolen his identity, ripped away his memories, and left him isolated and empty in his long, dark nights. Bucky knows who he was, at least what history shows him he was, but he doesn’t know who he is, any more than he knew then, when they were finished with him and put him away on ice. And how can telling Steve that help?

It won’t bring Bucky any peace, and it won’t do anything for Steve but tear him to shreds.

What would he have done for some paltry scrap of memory to hang on to in those endless winters -- change willingly into what took them months of torture and degradation to achieve? He might have. Might just have, if he could have kept even a particle of Steve with him. But those were things not meant for him, never meant for a beast in a cage.

He stays on the roof until twilight. When he gets back to the apartment, Steve’s already home, sitting on the sofa, sketching. “There’s coffee,” he says without looking up. 

Bucky pours himself a cup and stands by the island, watching Steve draw. Remembers thin flapping elbows moving up and down, back and forth, as the charcoal skritch skritched across paper and he turned the pad this way and that; remembers the hunch of bony shoulders under a stained white shirt and the tip of a pink tongue poking out from rosy lips; remembers wheat-colored hair absently brushed away by blackened fingertips as it fell in front of lustrous eyes and a fringe of impossibly long lashes.

His heart is being squeezed, it’s just like the day he was hit by the lightning, and he breathes, breathes against it. Red, green. “You’ve never asked me about the letter or the sketch I took.”

Steve hesitates, then continues drawing, doesn’t look up. “I wasn’t sure you got it. I didn’t want to pressure you. And I don’t mind that you took the sketch. I was glad you did.”

“It was the first thing that meant something to me. I didn’t know why, but it...they felt important.” _There is a shore, and you will reach it._

Putting his pencil down, Steve gazes up at him. “How was your day?”

“I feel a little better. Banner is teaching me to meditate and...tomorrow it’s yoga? Tai chi?” He shrugs. “He gave me these things to do for my head, I guess there are crystals in our ears or something I’m supposed to try to put back in place.”

Steve nods as if he knows this already. “I hope it all helps. Did you go up to the roof?”

“Yeah. Thank you for telling me about it. I loved it.”

Steve quirks his head at the word _love_ , and Bucky’s pretty surprised by it, too. “I’m really glad.”

Bucky finishes the coffee and puts his cup in the sink, at the end of his ability to interact with any more humanity. He turns to Steve, whose eyes are back down on the paper, wanting to tell him something with a glance or turn of the head or motion of the hand, but he doesn’t know how, so he heads down the hall. 

On his bed is a phone with a note from Steve -- “Natasha thought you might prefer she contact you directly instead of going through me.” He goes into the shower, stays there for a long time just letting the warm water heat his bones back up. Knows he should get something to eat, but he just doesn’t want to see Steve right then. After he’s been reading a while, he hears the front door close and heads to the kitchen for food. Steve’s left his drawing pad on the sofa, and Bucky opens it. It’s almost entirely cityscapes, maybe the places Steve’s been going when he leaves Bucky alone. But toward the end there’s a sketch of Sam, wearing wings. Wings like Bucky tore off him not long ago, before he’d shoved him over the side of the helicarrier. Abandoning the idea of eating, he goes back to the bedroom and curls up on the bed.

A few hours later he hears Steve come back in, get ready for bed. The silence, comforting before, festers inside him now, and he can’t stop thinking that Steve must be so miserable, having to compartmentalize his life. Keep someone he loves away because this pathetic remnant of a human being he’s taken on as a charity case is too dangerous. He lies awake for hours until, compelled the way he was the night before, he goes to check on Steve. He’s asleep, his breath shallow and even, but he’s saying words in his sleep that Bucky can’t hear. 

Bucky wishes he could go to him, wake him gently if he’s having a bad dream, put his arms around him. Hold Steve the way he held him when he was sick or sad or hurt. But Steve wakes then and startles when he realizes Bucky’s standing there, sits up in bed. He watches for a while.

Bucky says, “I just needed to make sure you were okay.” Needs, desires. Such strange concepts. 

“I am now.”

“Night.”

“Good night, Buck. Thanks for checking on me.”

 

In the morning, Steve is there again, cooking breakfast for him. It would have been easier if he’d been gone; guilt gnaws at him with its little rat teeth for looking at the sketch, for making Steve hide the person he loves.

Before Steve can say anything to him, Bucky says, “You can bring Sam back. He should stay here with you, not me. You shouldn’t have to be alone all the time just because of me.”

Steve puts his hand over his mouth, and Bucky can’t tell if he’s hiding a laugh or trying not to cry. Neither one is exactly optimal. He exhales raggedly -- so, trying not to cry -- and says, “It’s okay. He knows it’s best for you to have the space you need. But I think he’d like to meet you.”

“Why?” Bucky practically shouts. “Why would any sane person want to meet me after I’d tried to kill him? Almost killed him? Jesus god, what is wrong with all of you?”

Steve just slides the plate of eggs and bacon over to him, draws his mouth in a tight line and takes a deep nostril-flaring breath. Bucky can’t read his eyes at all. “I’m heading out. I hope you have a good day today, and if you need anything, you can call me. The phone’s all set up.” When Steve’s gone, he drives his metal fist into the wall, but it’s not really much help at all.

He knows he can’t be angry at Steve for this. But any emotion is still such an unaccustomed feeling for him and anger is the easiest to seize on. That day on the bridge, when Natasha had shot at him, when she and Steve had fought back and put him to the test, anger and frustration had surged inside him, emotions as forgotten as love and joy. No one had ever fought back, no one had ever spoken to him, but Steve had said a name that meant nothing to him in the moment yet everything to him later. And he’d needed so badly to keep it, to savor it for just a while longer, but they’d stripped it all away again. 

He sullenly eats his breakfast, sullenly leaves a message for Natasha to set a time to finish their debrief, and sullenly finds his way down to Bruce. As pissed off as he is, it all feels so very normal, like he’s some kind of regular guy who lives in a nice high-rise in Manhattan and carries a mobile phone and goes to yoga class. Not a monster who’d tried to kill the one man who’d cared about him and all his buddies.

Bruce goes over a regimen with him, talks to him like he’s that mythical regular guy, asks gentle questions about his health, and after a while Bucky evens out. Enough so that Bruce asks him if it’s okay to lie back and let him move his head around, says it might help with the vertigo. So far, Bruce has been really cautious about touching him, only the bare minimum he needs. But Bucky figures why not, if it helps, that’s all that matters and he can go up on the roof later and freak out then. In the hospital, he’d despised the feel of someone’s flesh on his own, but Bruce’s hands are comforting, strong. It’s been so long since he’s known what a human touch could be, contact made not for punishment or humiliation but for kindness and healing. 

Then they tackle more meditation, which is really, really tough -- the last thing Bucky wants is to empty out his thoughts, terrified of being alone in his head again with nothing to fill the silence. But Bruce works through it with him, explaining that it’s not so much, for the two of them, about finding inner peace or happiness, but about creating equilibrium, a place that they can reach calm. Bucky’s pretty dubious about ever achieving that, but it makes the process easier.

More difficult is the yoga. The postures are supposed to be the easy ones, but Bucky has zero flexibility. He perseveres because he hates not being able to do anything someone else can do. When they get to the end and the corpse pose, he lies there with tears streaming down the sides of his head. He wipes frantically at his eyes, completely bewildered, while Bruce silently moves out of the room. The tears just keep coming, though, and it gives him a headache. He sits up, biting his lip to get it to stop, and Bruce comes back in with a cup of green tea and hands it to him without a word.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Bucky says, wiping his eyes, his nose.

Bruce sits cross-legged in front of him. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you, Bucky.” Until now, Bruce has pointedly not referred to him by name -- probably Steve or Natasha told him about his reaction to her asking what he wanted to be called -- and it feels as soft and gentle as his hands. 

Bucky scoffs, drinks his tea in ashamed silence.

“I don’t know if it helps, but a lot of people have that reaction by the time they get to that pose. Or they laugh. It’s kind of new for you, to have intense feelings. When I first started all this” --he sweeps his arm around to indicate his room-- “it was new for me too, because I’d had to work so very hard at preventing anything I was afraid would bring the other guy out. I thought I couldn’t possibly deserve to feel good, or happy, or even just peaceful.”

He remembers: lying barefoot in the grass, shirts open, sun in the sky and ground under them, back from the field for a too-brief rest. Steve turning his face to Bucky, serene smile, colors all around him, hair reflecting golden light. “Should we feel guilty, to be happy like this in the middle of a war?” Steve asked him. And answering, “We deserve to feel good, even if it’s just for a little while.”

_Do you think you’re not deserving of forgiveness?_

Bruce stands and offers him a hand up. Without thinking he grabs it with his left hand, but Bruce doesn’t show any reaction to being touched by the metal. “You’ve had unspeakable things done to you. The fact that you’re here, that you’re not in a padded cell somewhere drooling into a pillow, is pretty astonishing. So you should cut yourself a little slack.”

“There’s still time.” Bucky works his jaw around, rubs at his temples, while Bruce laughs. 

“Do those head exercises at least twice more today. And I expect to see you again tomorrow.”

Bucky spends the rest of the day on the roof, poking around at the plants, looking at the metal tags that tell the Latin and common names of the plants. He doesn’t want to go back down and see Steve, try to figure out where they stand after their terrible -- _his_ terrible -- conversation that morning. It’s dark by the time he slips in the front door; there’s a light on in the living room but it’s otherwise dark, and Steve’s door is half-closed. There’s a container of take-out from a burger place, which he takes to his bedroom with a soda. But first he takes a shower, scrubbing the dirt out from under his nails. 

They used to trim his nails, chop at his hair, shave him, while he worked his way out of cryofreeze. It was a duty none of them wanted, so whoever did it was desultory at best, brutal at worst. He wouldn’t have cared about any of it, but they needed him to be able to blend in if it wasn’t a straight sniper assignment. Most of the time he could tune them out, but underneath that forced distance he loathed it when they touched him. He doesn’t even remember how many of their throats he’d crushed before he couldn’t take the punishment anymore. It had never been enough.

Bucky eats his burger and half the fries -- the rediscovery of the taste of a burger is almost enough to make him cry again -- and settles down to read. But as usual when he turns out the light, he can’t sleep, has to see if Steve’s in his bedroom. Partway down the hall he hears a whimpering sound and briefly wonders if Sam’s back, if they’re having sex and this is a terrible idea, but he pushes the door open just a hair to peer in. Steve’s in full-blown nightmare mode. It’s just like the time he had pneumonia when he was eleven, he’s muttering and thrashing and sweating.

Bucky’s paralyzed, doesn’t know what to do. The last thing Steve would want to awaken to would be Bucky’s face, because it’s probably what’s giving him nightmares in the first place. But leaving him to the bad dream feels...selfish. Something he’s becoming way too good at. 

Reaching down to touch Steve’s foot, he whispers, “Steve. Steve, it’s okay. Steve. You’re having a bad dream.” Steve shoots up in bed, gasping, his hand waving like he’s trying to grab hold of something. 

He rubs at his face, panting. “Bucky. It’s you. You’re okay. Are you okay?”

Bucky gives a sharp laugh. “You were having a bad dream. Why are you asking me that?” Realizes he’s still touching Steve’s foot, even though it’s beneath the covers, and snatches his hand away.

Steve doesn’t answer, and even in the dark Bucky can see his eyes burning as he looks at him. He feels weirdly exposed, just the loose pajama bottoms and thin t-shirt Steve had given him when he first got here, his arm mostly uncovered and nothing to protect himself with.

“I just wanted to see if you were all right, but you were...”

“Not all right.” Steve drinks water, glances at the clock as he puts the glass down. Draws his legs up and wraps his arms around them. “These past few nights, you keep checking on me. You can’t sleep until you do?”

Bucky nods. That seems all he’s capable of.

He runs his fingers through his spiky hair, and then stretches out his arm toward Bucky. With his other hand he pulls the covers back. 

Time stutters to a stop, his heart falters, he’s tumbling over the edge just like on that roof so many days ago. Red or green. Bucky slides into the bed on his side facing away from Steve, who tugs the covers up over his shoulder, but doesn’t touch him. 

“I’ll sleep better knowing you’re here,” Steve says against his back, his breath silky and warm. “Just like in the field. I could sleep like a baby anywhere, knowing you were on watch.” They lie like that for a long time, Steve’s breathing going shallow, the speed of his heartbeat subsiding.

Bucky thinks of how it felt to have Bruce touch him earlier in the day. It’s a balm, a blessing, a consecration now. Not something to fear and loathe. Bucky reaches behind him and finds Steve’s hand to pull it over his waist. He doesn’t want to see Steve’s face or know how he’s reacting. There’s too much possibility for shame. But Steve sighs, and Bucky thinks maybe this is okay. 

_Do you love_

_Do you_

In the darkness, it feels safe to say things. “There’s still so much I don’t remember. But I know that I always felt I had to take care of you. That that was my mission.”

“Yeah, Buck. You were always so good at taking care of me.”

His chest is constricted, squeezing the air of out him. “Did they make me this way? Or was this...always inside me? This monster.”

Behind him, Steve lets out a choking sob, but he doesn’t touch him or move his hand, respectful of Bucky’s space. He didn’t want to hurt Steve again, but somehow he always does and he can tell Steve’s crying, hears him wiping at his eyes. “No, you were never a monster. You were the best of what people can be. Everything I am came from you.”

He doesn’t believe that, but it’s a kind thing to say.


	5. Déjà Vécu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I think it’s going well and I can help him and maybe we can be friends again, and then...he’s just always so angry at me. He goes from zero to conniption in sixty seconds."

“’Cause that’s not a little creepy or anything. Waking up with a master assassin watching you sleep.” Sam’s heading back along Park Avenue toward the tower with Steve, returning from a vets’ meeting. Steve drinks his coffee, wrestling with that anxiety face he gets when he’s maybe regretting saying something -- or he could just be beating himself up because he thinks Sam will be jealous.

“It isn’t creepy. It’s...nice. He’s worried about me. And he doesn’t say much, but he talks a little bit each night. It feels like progress, I guess. And so, you know, I just thought that it might be better if he stayed, instead of going back to his room, that’s all.”

“So, that’s happening, then,” Sam says. “Huh.” He actually agrees with Steve, that it’s progress for Barnes. But it’s way too much fun to fuck with Steve sometimes.

“ _Nothing_ happened! I guess I’m not telling this right,” Steve says. “I mean, he just sleeps, and I think it’s the first time since he got here he’s slept relatively well. He hasn’t screamed once. I can’t tell you what that was like, hearing him shouting when he woke up, and knowing I shouldn’t go to him, try to help him.”

Sam puts a hand on Steve’s arm. “Sorry, man, I’m just teasing you because you’re so _worried_. What about you? Did you sleep better?” Sam arches an eyebrow at him, takes a sip of his chai.

“I’ve actually been having that nightmare again. About him falling from the train. But I haven’t had it the past few nights.”

“I’m taking that as a yes.”

“But like I said, nothing happened.” 

“Steve, man, knock it off. Ah, I shouldn’t have flipped you shit -- I ain’t worried about it. If the two of you are able to find some kind of peace and quiet by sharing a bed, who am I to argue with progress? It’s not that different from sleeping out in the field -- you’re both watching out for each other.”

“Gosh, that’s enlightened of you.” Steve drinks his coffee while they wait for a light -- Steve never jaywalks. “Boyfriend.”

Sam laughs. “Oh man, you are so worked up about this. I’m not concerned, I’m glad. You think I haven’t wanted this for you since we first hooked up? I mean, you have bad nights and okay nights, but even the okay nights are still worse than most people’s. All’s I ever wanted was for you to feel better.”

“It’s not just Bucky being there that makes me feel better, you know.” Steve cocks an eyebrow at him, gives him a smirk. That’s more like it.

“Oh, I know,” Sam says with a knowing grin. “So, he any closer to actually meeting me now?”

“I’d wanted to bring it up again, but he’s always gone by the time I wake up. Back in his room with the door closed, and I can hear the shower running.”

“Do you think he regrets sleeping there? Or just feeling vulnerable, maybe.” That would be a pretty big deal, Barnes opening himself up that way, allowing himself to be exposed to harm. It’s clear that at this point he trusts Steve completely, even if Steve doesn’t really see that.

Steve sighs. “I honestly don’t know. I can’t tell with him. I think things are progressing, I think it’s going well and I can help him and maybe we can be friends again, and then...he’s just always so angry at me. He goes from zero to conniption in sixty seconds.”

That makes Sam laugh so hard he has to bite the inside of his cheek for a second to stop. “It’s not you he’s angry with. Steve, it’s never been you he’s angry with. He’s pissed at the world, at the people who took everything away from him and tortured him, he’s pissed at himself because he thinks he failed you.” Sam presses fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Sweet Jesus on a biscuit, it’s not you he’s angry at. You’re just the unfortunate recipient of all that rage.”

Nodding, Steve throws his empty cup in the trash, stuffs his hands in his pockets. He acts like he understands what Sam’s saying, but Sam doesn’t believe it for a moment. “I keep getting my hopes up. That despite what I told him about it being more important that he find what he needs for himself, my desperation to keep him in my life is coming through and he hates it. I’m needy and he can’t stand it. Hell, I can’t stand it.” He stares up at the roofline of the tower, and Sam wonders if Barnes is up there, avoiding Steve, something he’s all too acutely aware of. “I just can’t stop getting my hopes up, but I know better, and it’s killing me.”

Sam grimaces. “I get that. But the thing is, that’s who you are. You’re gonna hope he gets better and finds his way back to you. I know what it’s like to want to save someone, to protect them. But at a certain point, you have to trust that you’ve given them the tools to make the right decisions. You have to trust yourself first, Steve.”

“I suppose so.” They head into the building and when they get in the elevator, Steve asks JARVIS where Bucky is -- of course it’s the roof. He asks Sam with his eyes if he wants to go up there, and Sam nods. He’s not entirely certain that invading Barnes’s sanctum sanctorum -- not that he has any idea what Barnes does up there -- is the best idea, but it’s gotta happen sometime. Steve trusts Barnes not to lose his shit, so that will have to do for the rest of them. At worst, Sam hopes, Barnes will just be nonverbal and leave, and that’s something Sam can certainly understand and he’d never take personally; it’s the murdering people he tends to take to heart.

Sam’s been watching this happen to Steve in slo-mo every day -- the ups and downs, the hope and hopelessness. It’s hard for Steve to believe that Barnes is, all things considered, doing reasonably well, because Barnes’s mind is a black hole, and the fact that there’s even a tiny sliver of the light of his humanity stealing out is one of the more astonishing things Sam’s ever seen. How many people could survive what he’s been through? But Steve is just overpowered by his love, it weighs so heavy on him that he might as well be in the center of that black hole, being crushed into oblivion. 

They have to take a separate, smaller elevator to the roof. When they get up there, Sam stays by the doors in case Steve finds out Bucky doesn’t want to see them. He watches Steve meander through the garden, making a fair amount of noise so he doesn’t startle his friend.

When Steve comes back with Barnes, Sam stiffens a little, hating that he’s got just that much fear left over. Though Bucky’s wearing a hoodie, a sweatshirt under that, and jeans, looking for all the world like a fairly normal scruffy guy, Sam’s still got that afterimage lurking in his mind of the combat-geared cyborg who kicked them both over the side of the helicarrier. It’s instinctual, he knows it, and even after everything else that’s happened, the roof and the hospital and hearing Barnes debrief with Natasha, one that Sam still can’t control. 

Sam says, willing some calm into his brain, “Hey, man, good to see you up and around.” 

To his great surprise, Bucky sticks his hand out and says, “Thanks for trying to catch us.” They shake hands. Like it’s the normal thing you do when meeting your boyfriend’s ex who tried to kill you both and damn near succeeded, and he’s not a walking human nightmare who could kill you with an eyelash. 

“My pleasure,” Sam says. “How’s this jerk treating you? I hear he hovers like a freaking Sikorsky.” Sam offers his best sideways grin, hoping to put Barnes at ease.

Bucky’s eyes narrow, possibly uncertain how he should respond or if this is a joke, so Steve, being Steve, steps in and says, “I’m right here, you know.” They both glance at him, and then Barnes seems to loosen up, running his hand through his hair.

“He always had an elevated sense of his own importance.”

Sam bursts out laughing. Okay, now he can see what Steve’s on about, that there really are flashes of a human being Barnes allows to creep out of the dark matter. “He does, doesn’t he? Like none of us can get by without Captain freakin’ America running our lives.”

“Again, right here,” Steve says. But it clearly lifts Steve up -- Sam’s no less wary of Barnes, and Barnes is probably no less wary of him either, but if they can find common ground on what a pain in the ass Steve is, well, then, all the better. Then Steve’s phone rings, and he says, “Gotta get this,” while taking a few steps away to answer it. 

“Did he engineer that call so we would talk?” Barnes says, looking up at him from under his brows.

“Nah, it’s legit,” Sam says. “We were gonna grab some dinner soon. Would you like to join us?” he asks, though he’s pretty certain of the answer.

Bucky stares down at the ground. “Not up for that today.”

“That’s okay. Whenever you’re ready.” Sam glances over toward Steve, and then says, “Listen, Barnes, I know it can be hard sometimes, when you’re around someone you have a lot of baggage with. So if you ever want to talk to someone else, my number is in your phone.”

Bucky’s chafing, Sam can see it, but he says, “Thanks.” Then his head shoots up and he blurts out, “I’m sorry I came between you two. I didn’t want to do that.”

Where the fuck did that come from? “Nah, man, you didn’t come between us. It’s good. Me and Steve started out as friends, and no matter what happens, we’ll always be friends. Listen, I’m glad you’re here for him. You know how much he likes having people to fuss over.”

Barnes drops his head again. Normally, Sam can tell what direction someone’s thoughts are heading, but Barnes is the blankest of blank slates. So Sam says gently, “It’s very thoughtful of you, though, to worry about it.”

The way Barnes’s shoulders slope, the fraction that might go unnoticed by anyone else, makes Sam think that helped to hear, like he can let go of the tension of being on for Sam and Steve. But then Steve comes back, and it all disappears, a mirage that shimmers away when you blink. Barnes switches on again, current flowing through him like the downed live wire he is.

“Did you ask Bucky if he wanted to join us for dinner?” Steve asks, all forced good humor.

“He’s got other plans,” Sam says, touching Bucky’s elbow lightly, and opens the elevator doors. “Good to meet you, man.”

But Bucky’s already turned back to where he came from, head down, hands in pockets.

 

Dinner that night includes Natasha and Clint, with everyone trading war stories and drinking a lot of good wine. Even though Sam has been looking for a place of his own, he enjoys hanging out here with everyone, being accessible to Steve while he wrestles with the challenges of taking care of Barnes. But the idea of living here permanently isn’t really in the cards for him, he thinks, although it’s easy to stay protected from the outside world in this tower. Stark had warned Sam that his life was about to become very public after the robot attack, and he’s still figuring it out. You couldn’t ask for a better guide, though, than Steve, when it came to navigating the territory of fame.

They’ve managed a whole evening of not talking about Steve’s favorite topic until Natasha mentions that she and Clint had spent the afternoon with Barnes going over the intel he’d collected on his Hydra purge. Steve cocks his head to the side and glances at Sam. “No wonder he didn’t want to talk anymore. He’d had his fill of people.” 

Natasha and Clint exchange a look. So now is the portion of the evening for everyone to talk about Barnes, and Sam sighs inwardly. It’s not that he resents it, he just wants Steve to let go once in a while, give himself a break from nannying, because he just doesn’t know how to relax. “How’s he doing, otherwise?” Natasha asks. 

Steve sits back in his chair, shrugs. “Still a long way to go.”

“So did you learn anything new?” Sam asks. 

“Yeah, actually, we did,” Clint says. “But let’s talk shop another time.” Her pours the last of the wine into his glass and shakes the bottle. Sam gets up and grabs another bottle of red. 

Clint surprises him and says, “You know how fond I am of getting involved in other people’s...anything. But he was your squad’s marksman, right?” Steve nods. “Maybe he’d enjoy the range. I could take him next time. I looked at his files. Most of his work was from a distance, and that’s how I usually operate. You have to practice. So it’d give him something else to focus on. Barnes cut off a lot of heads, but Hydra does like to brag that they grow two more every time one rolls.” He widens his eyes, glances around the table at each of them in turn. “Keep a guy like that sharp, it’s to our benefit too.”

“So Bucky seems to think. He’s said that a couple times,” Steve says. “That would be great, if you brought him along. I’ll ask him.”

“Must have been a damn good soldier,” Clint says to Steve, and the melancholy look that flutters across Steve’s face makes Sam’s heart crack a little. 

“The best. I wouldn’t have survived without him.”

They spend the next hour finishing the last bottle of wine, and then Steve gives him a quick nod, says goodnight, and Clint follows along shortly after. Natasha busies herself in the kitchen, stacks the dishwasher, while Sam watches her, arms folded across his chest, smiling. “Never figured you for the domestic stuff. There is a housekeeper, you know.”

“Mmm,” she murmurs, washing her hands off. “Gives me an excuse to hang out a while longer.”

His mouth opens and closes a couple times before he says, “You needed an excuse, all’s you had to do was ask.”

Smirking, she slinks past him, heading for the door, but stops and leans against the wall, gazing up at him from under her lashes. His brain does a dizzy little pirouette and he thinks, uh-oh, I’m in trouble now.

“So...something’s happening here, isn’t it? You and me. I’m not just imagining this.”

She nods, takes his hand. “I think it’s been happening for a while. But I was not going to get in the middle of your relationship with Steve. And I won’t if you’re still together, but -- correct me if I’m wrong -- you two aren’t as hot and heavy as you were.”

“No, you’re not wrong.” 

“How do you feel about that?” she asks, and pulls him closer to her, but she’s uncharacteristically cautious, maybe even distanced.

“I told him at the beginning my eyes were open. I’m a big boy. It was friends with really, really good benefits, you know? And it’s been one of the best times I’ve ever had, not gonna lie. But I knew what I was getting into.” He clears his throat. “And what about you and Barton?”

“That is a long story. But we have lives both separate and together.”

He can’t say he understands what she means, but he’s growing used to the cryptic nature of her. They probably couldn’t be any more different as people, but he supposes they’ve got a whopping case of opposites attract. “When you want to tell me, I’m listening.”

She smiles, one of those soft smiles that reach her eyes, which he knows he’s privileged to see. “For Steve, it’s like yesterday that he and Barnes were working together. Only a few years to grieve him and move on, and most people don’t move on from something like that that quickly.”

Sam thinks about Riley, about what it took for him to step back into life after losing him. “No, they don’t. The hardest part for him wasn’t about letting go, even. It was about figuring out how to start over without him.” 

“I think he’s going to be okay,” she says, and Sam’s not sure if she means Steve or Bucky. “I think we all are.” She stands on tiptoes and kisses his cheek, lets her hand slide down the side of his face, his neck. After she closes the door on her way out, he leans back against the wall, breathing in her lingering perfume.

Less than a year ago he was a regular guy living a regular life, and now he’s got genetically enhanced supermodels coming on to him every time he turns around. Maybe he’ll stay here for a little while longer.

 

Steve gets back to his apartment, pleasantly buzzed from the dinner and the conversation, but Bucky’s door is closed. It’s so easy to get his hopes up, to think that maybe Bucky will want to sleep here every night, but he has to remind himself that no two days will be the same for him, that each time he’ll have to figure out anew what he’s capable of, what he needs. Steve tells himself it’s okay, that he only needs for Bucky to find what’s right for himself, but of course it’s a lie.

When Sam and Bucky met, Steve wanted to pinch himself to see if he was actually dreaming or not when Bucky had reached out to shake Sam’s hand. It was the first time he’d glimpsed an essence of the old Bucky showing through -- as if he was viewing the pentimento in a painting of the Bucky Barnes he’d loved his whole life.

But that didn’t mean Bucky was healing. Peggy had told him that sometimes the best we can do is to start over. Starting over wasn’t exactly a cakewalk for anyone, but for Bucky it meant trying to discard a being he believed was a monster, believed was an intrinsic part of his nature, not something poisonous forced inside him by someone evil.

How did a human being survive seventy years of torture and isolation like that, of such emptiness and hopelessness that no one could even fathom what it truly meant? No one could blame him for choosing to put a gun in his mouth and end it, if that had been his decision. Bucky doesn’t want to hear how strong and brave he is attempting to come through this, because he probably thinks punching his own ticket would have been the more courageous thing to do. He believes he’s just a dragging weight, pulling Steve and everyone else down to drown along with him. 

Of course Sam was right, Bucky wasn’t angry at Steve, but even if he was, Steve could hardly blame him. Might have been easier if he was; resentment and rage he could identify with, understand. Every decision Steve had made from the moment he’d tried enlisting at the Expo onward had led to Bucky’s fall and the seventy-year nightmare he couldn’t wake up from.

Steve slips into bed and turns out the light. Tries to fall asleep, but finds he’s waiting, hoping. Just as he’s finally drifting off, he hears padding footsteps and then Bucky’s standing in the doorway. He always seems to need an invitation, so Steve rolls over and stretches his hand out toward Bucky.

Again Bucky hesitates, for longer this time, so Steve almost thinks he’s not going to do it. But then he moves forward so rapidly Steve blinks -- it’s easy to forget, sometimes, the physicality of him now, the swift surety of his movements. He had always been graceful, with an economy of motion and strength that had been most evident as an athlete at school and later when they were in the field during the war, but the ones who’d created the Winter Soldier had amplified that to an almost terrifying degree. 

Bucky slides under the covers, taking the same position as the previous nights, and Steve keeps his hands back, stays as far away as he can, waits for Bucky’s rapid breathing to slow a little. He never knows if he should risk saying something, or just keep quiet and wait for Bucky’s cues, that maybe Bucky wants him to take the lead. Steve’s not even sure he should care who does what -- Bucky’s here with him, in his bed, seeking the comfort of his friendship. Nothing else really matters.

When he thinks Bucky’s fallen asleep, he allows himself to relax, but Bucky says in a small voice, “Sam seems like a nice fellow.”

That makes him smile. “Yeah, he is. I think...I think he’s falling in love with Natasha, though.”

Bucky straightens in surprise but doesn’t say anything. His reaction drags that maddening hope back up in Steve again. It’s as if he’s in a dream already, soft memory bleeding in to warm present, the heat of Bucky’s skin and the scent of his hair enveloping him in an expectant haze. Steve decides to take a chance and rests his hand on Bucky’s ribs; that he doesn’t shake it off or move away allows Steve to drift off, relaxed, happy. If this is all he gets, he’ll take it. He’ll take it.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been asleep. It can’t be too long. Steve wakes to confusion, a shrieking wail like an animal being slaughtered piercing his sleep, and a pounding in the background. It takes Steve a few seconds to get clarity, to see that Bucky’s not in the bed and that the sound is coming from the corner of the room. Scrambling out of bed, hitting the lights, Steve crouches down next to Bucky, who’s banging the back of his head against a sharp corner of the dresser and pounding his metal fist into the wall next to him, little puffs of drywall dust exploding over his arm. His eyes are glassy, his mouth bloody, and there’s more blood coursing down the left side of his head. 

He’s been clawing at his arms and face and neck, the nails of his real hand shredding skin, the metal fingers tearing tracks. It’s hard to understand what he’s saying, but it sounds like “all of them, all of them.” Steve puts his hand behind Bucky’s head, because the grotesque sound of his head hitting the wood is nauseating, and with his other hand grabs Bucky’s arms. Though he doesn’t fight back, Bucky doesn’t stop trying to claw at his skin, either. 

“Bucky, stop. Stop it. You’re all right. You’re here with me now, stop it. You’re hurting yourself, please stop.” He keeps up a steady stream of babble but he’s sure Bucky doesn’t hear him, he’s saying, “All of them.” Steve pushes his hands down onto his lap, which is splotched with blood. He wraps his arms around Bucky, opens his legs wide and slides Bucky in between them, using his body as a vise to hold him still. “Stop it, Bucky. You have to stop it now, it’s gonna be okay. It’s okay now.”

Steve doesn’t know who’s shaking harder, Bucky or him, so he starts rocking Bucky slowly side to side, trying to get him to stop clawing at his own flesh. His hands slip against the blood on Bucky’s skin, but he rocks and rocks and murmurs into Bucky’s ear. “Make it stop,” Bucky says, over and over, and Steve doesn’t know if he’s talking about what’s in his own head or what Steve’s doing. 

They’ve been sitting there for a long time when Bucky finally calms a little, the shaking stopping and starting in bursts, the words trailing off into unintelligible sounds, still the desperate whine of a trapped animal. His head lolls against Steve’s shoulder, eyes unfocused, in no way present. 

There’s so much blood everywhere and Steve doesn’t even know where all of it comes from. The back of Bucky’s head feels pulpy, and there’s a deep gash at his hairline near his left eye. Scalp wounds are notorious bleeders for very little actual damage, but Steve thinks these are every bit as bad as they seem.

Since he can’t see the clock without turning completely around, Steve has no idea how long they’ve been sitting there when Bucky finally stops shaking. “Hey, Buck,” Steve says softly, smoothing his hair back, cheek against Bucky’s ear. “Things are pretty messy here. What do you say we get you in the shower and rinse some of this off?” He’s not surprised there’s no response. In the time he’s been here, Bucky’s gotten lost in the middle distance many times, Steve’s watched him when his eyes lose focus, his jaw slackens, and his mind seems so far away Steve has panicked that he might not come back. But that was nothing compared to this.

The only conclusion Steve can come to is that he’s the one who triggered it, he’s pushed him too far too fast, just because he was so desperate to bring Bucky back to him. Shame gnaws at him, leaving him nauseated and shaking himself.

“Let me help you up,” Steve says, and tugs him up. Bucky stands, not completely on his own power, and Steve carefully walks him toward the bathroom. How did he survive those long months alone after Insight, if it could get this bad? Christ, what a mess. He turns on the shower, waits till it warms up enough, and then pulls Bucky’s t-shirt and pajama pants off. It doesn’t seem to bother him, as if being stripped in front of others is what he expects. There’s only the thousand-yard stare.

This is the first time Steve’s seen Bucky’s entire body. This is the first time Steve thinks he can’t go on, that he can’t do this anymore, he has lost his grip so completely he may as well have never come up from that river. This is the first time he thinks that if he can’t burn down the whole world and salt the earth there is no point, he will lose his mind, he _is_ losing his mind. There is no one left that he can murder as slowly and as cruelly as possible to pay them back for doing this to his friend. 

_This is a test._

_Is this a test?_

He chokes back the rage that threatens in the deep cave of his lungs, digs fingers into his eyes so he can hold back the need to scream or vomit or both. Then walks Bucky into the shower, but all Bucky does is stand there, blood swirling around his feet in sordid watercolor blooms. Steve sighs, thinks _oh well, at least the blood won’t set into a stain_ , and steps into the shower himself, still in his pajama bottoms and undershirt, and moves Bucky directly under the big showerhead that comes out of the ceiling. He’s never been more grateful for such a luxurious place as this, where the water falls softly down like rain.

With the blood gone, Steve can clearly see all the places Bucky’s torn at his skin, and he focuses on that, trying not to look at the old scars that desecrate his back and shoulder where the metal meets skin. In the hospital he’d seen a glimpse of the scarring at the top of the shoulder, and he’d seen the clinical photographs in black and white back in the bank vault. It hadn’t prepared him for this at all.

Just as Steve’s going to turn the shower off, Bucky collapses against him and slides down onto the floor, wrapping his arms around his knees and pressing his forehead to them. Steve sits down next to Bucky, puts his arm around him, and strokes his hand through Bucky’s hair, over and over. 

“The pilots,” Bucky mumbles. “The pilots.”

“Can you tell me about it? Is it okay to tell me?” Bucky keeps his eyes closed, lets Steve hold on to him and wash the water through his hair, resting his head against Steve’s arm. Steve remembers Bucky saying that he sits in the shower for long periods of time, and it seems to soothe him now, even if Steve’s presence probably doesn’t.

Bucky talks so fast Steve almost can’t understand him. “I killed them all. The pilots and the ground crew and they were coming to help you and I killed them all so they couldn’t. All of them. All of them and I can remember that, I can remember that, even when I forget the rest it’s them I remember.”

Oh. The SHIELD pilots at the ground base. Not the Insight crews. “You didn’t kill them all, Buck. Some of them got out. A lot of the personnel on the ground got out.”

“You’re lying. Lying.” Bucky finally opens his eyes, but he doesn’t look at Steve.

“You remember enough about me to know what a shit liar I am. Not all of them survived. But some of them did.” Not that Steve had done a good job himself in coping with his guilt about that day, but now wasn’t the time to tell Bucky that.

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut, grimacing, shaking with the effort to keep himself together.

“I’m gonna take you out now, dry you off. I need to patch you up.” Bucky doesn’t say anything, but his hands keep balling up in fists, open closed, open closed. Steve hoists him up, folds Bucky to him, putting arms around him to keep him warm, and turns off the water. Rubs his back a little bit before guiding him out, gets towels so Bucky can sit on the bench and Steve can wrap him up. 

“Will it bother you if I dry you off? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” Steve thinks of all the times Bucky took care of him, the mercies he bestowed with kind hands and soft words. All the times he’d been so sick even the most basic of bodily functions and hygiene were beyond him, and Bucky helping his mother take care of him, never complaining. As he dries Bucky off, he tracks the worst of the damage -- the back of Bucky’s head is raw in one spot, and the gouges on his collarbone and real arm are deepest.

He wraps the towels around Bucky as best he can. “JARVIS,” Steve says, “is there a first aid kit anywhere in this apartment?” He’s never had cause to look, should have expected he would when Bucky came to stay. 

“Yes, Captain, there are three, including one in the master bath, third cupboard to your left.” _God bless you, Pepper Potts_. He kneels down and puts butterfly bandages on the worst ones, and uses the liquid bandage for the damage to the back of Bucky’s head. Some of it could really use stitches, but he knows that’s not an option. 

As he spreads ointment on the lesser scrapes, Bucky clutches his arm. “I stood on the canopy of the jet and I shot one of them in the head. Straight down. Bullet through his helmet. I flew the jet with his body in the seat next to me.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say: he can’t say _I know_ or _it’s okay_ or _it’ll be all right_ , because this will haunt Bucky forever and he has no idea how the hell someone’s supposed to live with that. Steve’s never been able to completely accept the blood on his own hands from that day, so how can he help Bucky accept it? He is the blind leading the blind, and he’s terrified that he’s doing more harm to Bucky than good.

Steve gently presses his forehead to Bucky’s, smoothes a hand along his jaw. “Do you want me to tell you that you’re beyond forgiveness? That you really are a monster because of that? Is that what you want from me? Because you won’t get it. You won’t ever get it. No one who could feel this kind of guilt” --he touches Bucky’s metal arm-- “is irredeemable. You had no choice. You never had a fucking choice.”

The metal hand is squeezing his arm so hard Steve’s seeing stars, but he doesn’t stop. “I won’t let you take the blame for these things. I won’t. What would they have done to you if you hadn’t fulfilled your mission? Did you even know until that moment you took me out of the water that you had a choice to make, that you could do anything except what they demanded of you? Because I’ve seen that chair they put you in and I’ve seen your files and I know what remembering all this is doing to you. Don’t you dare expect me to give up on you because of this. And don’t you dare give up on yourself.”

Bucky holds on to him so tightly now Steve almost can’t breathe. But Steve won’t let go, he won’t ever let go and if he could stay like this with Bucky forever, he would. Steve touches the side of Bucky’s face, cups his chin in his palm. 

In a voice so small and quiet it’s like a child’s, Bucky says, “It hurts so much. Noise in my head that just won’t stop, it’s metal bending and twisting and it hurts so much. But it’s worse when it goes away because it was silent inside for so many years, Steve. So silent, and I can’t do that again, I can’t. I can’t.”

“Have you ever had an episode this bad before? I’ve heard you at night. But nothing like this.” He combs back Bucky’s damp hair with his fingers, traces across his eyebrow to the gash on his forehead. 

Bucky shakes his head. 

“Do you think it’s because...because you were in my bed? Do you think I’m making things worse for you?”

Another shake of the head, and Steve presses his mouth to the hollow of Bucky’s throat. Resting his cheek against Steve’s head, Bucky says, “Sometimes people can be too broken to be fixed.”

“I don’t believe that at all. And if you really did, I wouldn’t be here today.” He stands, and pulls Bucky up gently, wrapping the towel around him more tightly. “On your feet, soldier, let’s get some fresh PJs on you and back to bed.” Bucky stumbles against him. “One foot in front of the other, buddy.”

Steve helps Bucky into pajamas, then gets him into the bed. As soon as he seems comfortable, Steve slips his sodden clothes off and puts on something dry. He tosses all the wet things in a pile on the bathroom floor. Maybe it’s not such a great idea to sleep in the same bed tonight, he thinks, but he slides in next to Bucky anyway. Automatically, Bucky rolls over on to his side facing away from Steve, but then after a few minutes, he changes positions and rolls over to face Steve. 

He is so beautiful, Steve thinks, always so beautiful. How can you love someone so much and yet not know how to love them? 

Bucky presses his fingertips to Steve’s heart. “I saw pictures of you when they took you out of the ice. You were lying down, with your shield in front of you. You survived the crash, didn’t you? Tried to get out.”

“I was pretty badly injured. There was ice and water and the plane was scattered in pieces...I thought if I just lay down, I could rest, get better, climb out.”

“Was it silent for you, too?”

“I remember...I think for a while I thought about you, and Peggy, and Ma. I thought Howard might find me because he was so smart and if anyone could find me, he would. I would just rest and he would find me. There were random memories and dreams, ball games and Coney Island and school, birthdays. And then I think it was silent. It could have been years or decades. I’ve tried to remember it, to pull back what happened in those years, but I never could.”

Steve brushes Bucky’s hair back again and says, “You need to sleep now. Just go to sleep.” He doesn’t want to tell Bucky that he was glad to give up back then, every bit as relieved as he was to give up on the helicarrier when he thought Bucky wouldn’t remember him. That he was afraid of what his future could be without Bucky in it, even with Peggy. That he felt so sorry for himself he was ready to leave it all behind, but Bucky was the one who was dead and gone.

“I never would have let you get on that plane without a backup plan.”

“Shh,” Steve says, and pulls the covers up tighter. “Just rest now. Just rest.”

 

****

 

They’d been out in the field for so many days that Bucky was losing track of time. Bucky was tired, so tired, but they’d been successful enough that for the first time since they’d started the squad, he believed they could really do what Steve had promised him -- wipe the bastards off the face of the earth.

They were on their way to rendezvous with their company, then catch transport back to England. For the night, though, he and the Commandos were looking at the luxury of bedding down in a brick factory, the tunnels leading to the main kiln still gloriously warm, the walls so sturdy and thick they could withstand even heavy artillery long enough to provide escape, should it come to that. It felt like a room at the Ritz. Whoever was using it must have abandoned it only days before, like so many of the places they’d come across lately. Nothing like being behind a retreating occupying army.

“I’m a little worried about the carbon monoxide,” Dum Dum said, “but on the other hand, magnificent warmth. Can’t beat that.” Or the fact that there were toilets, tables or benches they could sleep on instead of the ground, and running water. They’d booby-trapped the entrances to secure a perimeter, and now could settle in to eat and sleep.

“Pick your own beautiful suite, gentlemen,” Steve said, “we have plenty of space for once.” He pulled out some rations and pointed to the tunnel spoking northwest. “This one’s mine.” When they were exhausted enough, they could all sleep practically on top of each other, but Steve liked to get away from everyone sometimes, something Bucky could understand.

As always, Bucky went with him, sliding a key into the tab on a tin of corned beef and unrolling the lid. This was always the hardest part of being in the field so long if they didn’t have the platoon or the company behind them -- Steve needed to eat a lot more than normal people, and they always seemed to be on their last rations, scavenging whatever they could wherever they could. Bucky too often went without just so he could give what little he had to Steve. They’d bickered about it enough times that the other fellas just rolled their eyes and muttered about how Mom and Dad were fighting again. 

“Someone’s gotta take care of you, you punk,” was Bucky’s usual comment whenever Steve tried to refuse. Steve might have had a new body and new abilities, but Bucky still considered it his job to mind him. 

Exhausted, they pulled up a bench and sat down, backs against the warm walls, and Steve took off his helmet. He fired up one of the kerosene lamps they’d found in the office. They could hear the voices of the other boys, their laughter, rolling down the tunnel. “I feel like I should climb into the kiln or I might never warm up. These past few days have been worse than any New York winter I can ever remember.”

“Not officially winter yet. Doesn’t start till December twenty-first.” Bucky finished his beef, opened the cheese tin, and passed it to Steve. He took a long drink from his canteen, and watched Steve drink from his, the way his throat moved, examined the deep lines of dirt embedded in his skin. Bucky always tried to shave if he could, but he had a fairly scruffy beard by now and Steve took his gloves off, reached over, scratched his fingers through it. His touch sent little electric shocks through Bucky’s chest.

“Always so precise.”

“Mmm. Don’t tell me you don’t appreciate that about me.”

“It’s one of many qualities that I like,” Steve said, and glanced down the tunnel before leaning over and kissing Bucky. “If you want, I’ll list them.”

Bucky shoved his fingers through Steve’s hair, tugged him tighter into another kiss, his tongue darting in and out of Steve’s mouth. He hadn’t kissed Steve in...he couldn’t even remember now, it’d been so long. “Do I taste as disgusting as I feel?” Bucky asked, grinning.

“I wouldn’t be able to tell since I’m probably just as bad.”

“You’re perfect. You always are.” He rustled around in his rucksack, then said, “Aha! I knew I had some Doublemint left. Here, let me make myself kissable.” Before he could unwrap a stick, though, Steve grabbed him by the collar, yanked him over, and kissed him. Sometimes he wondered if he liked it a little too much when Steve manhandled him. There were definitely some benefits to Steve’s new and improved body.

“You’re always kissable,” Steve said, dropping little pecks all over his chin and cheeks. Out of the corner of his eye, Bucky saw movement in the dim light, and then realized Jim Morita was standing there, eyebrows up to his hairline, hand holding what looked like a bottle of wine in midair. 

“Uh...” he said, and then cleared his throat, tried again. “I was just going to tell you we found some vino by the kiln, but I guess you guys are busy.” 

Steve’s face was frozen in fear, and you could see the gears turning in his head as he stood, a million fleeting thoughts running through his mind as he blushed furiously. Bucky, though, was trying desperately to hide a laugh. Well, Steve would certainly be warm now. “Jim, I--”

“Hey, don’t sweat it, chief,” Jim said, tossing Steve the bottle. “None of my business.” He laughed. “Guess we were all pretty lucky we got taken prisoner with Barnes here.”

He shrugged and walked away, scratching his head, putting his cap back on. 

Steve slid down the wall as Bucky cackled. “Oh, my God. On a scale of one to ten, how screwed are we?”

“I don’t know, man.” Bucky threw his hands up in the air. “You think those guys don’t know there’s something different about us? You bullying people into quartering me with you, us always attached at the shoulder and hip, the way we look at each other...”

“Do you think he’ll tell anyone?”

“You mean besides the rest of those idiots? No. They’re already crazy enough to follow you around on this crusade, this won’t change anything. Besides, they know you’re sweet on Peggy, anyway. They’ll just think I’m the fairy.”

“I can’t believe this, I know better than to be so reckless.”

“Aw, look at it this way, at least I wasn’t up against the wall with my pants around my ankles and your mouth on my dick.”

“Yeah, that makes me feel a whole lot better.”

Bucky knocked the back of his head against the wall a couple times. Sometimes Steve could be so ridiculous. “Steve. Listen to me. Everyone chose to be here. They knew when we went out the first time that you were still learning, that we were doing something the Army doesn’t even really believe is legit. Nothing about us is normal. Nothing. We got a Japanese guy and a Colored fella and hell, we got a Frenchie and a Limey on what’s essentially an American squad. Dugan’s a lush. I’m a walking disaster who had who the fuck knows what done to him. So we’re all a little messed up. Even if Jim tells the rest of them what he saw, I don’t think a little conduct unbecoming will mean squat to them in the long run.”

“I really hope you’re right. I’d hate to think everything we worked for could go up in smoke.” 

Bucky grabbed the bottle of wine out of his hand, pulled the cork out with his knife, and drank. “Maybe this’ll take the sting off.” He gave Steve the bottle.

Steve took a drink. “I guess if I have to go down in flames, at least I’ll go with you.”

“Up in smoke, down in flames. Steve. Tell you what. Stop worrying your pretty little head about it and get some shut-eye. I’ll go check in with the fellas. I’m on watch till eight anyways. It’ll be okay. I’ll make it okay.”

Bucky went off to check the perimeter, even though he didn’t really have to do that since Dernier _loved_ booby-trapping things, but he needed to think. He understood Steve’s worry, to a certain degree. But he also knew these men in a different way than Steve had come to know them, he’d seen them in the worst of the worst back at the Hydra facility. Saw what made them crack open, what made them come together for each other. Not one of them had judged Bucky when he was falling apart in those first few days after the rescue. 

Bucky very rarely smoked -- he’d never developed the habit when he was younger because of Steve’s asthma -- and now it didn’t do much for him, but times like this he’d fish out a cigarette and just stare at nothing for a little while, enjoying the solitude and turning over whatever was on his mind at the time. He watched the ash burn down between his fingers, thinking of what to say to the boys, if he even should say anything to them. 

There was something about chasing around Europe with Steve and the boys that had made him so much more reckless than he’d ever been before. Not that Steve hadn’t always brought out that foolhardiness in him growing up, with his tendency to start fights and try for things he couldn’t always succeed in alone, where Bucky had to step in and pick up the pieces. But over these months fighting together, Bucky had begun to believe more and more that he was going to die out here. If he had to go, he hoped it was him and Steve together, because he couldn’t imagine trying to live on without him. What would be the point? And Steve would have Peggy, so if Bucky went first, he’d be able to withstand it. 

Steve was a supersoldier, but he still needed protecting, still tried for things he couldn’t quite achieve on his own. Bucky accepted that it was his job to help Steve achieve them. His mission. One he’d taken on willingly as a child, too naive to know what he was doing and what the consequences would be. But maybe this was a mission he couldn’t come back from. So he wasn’t willing to let go of those tiny moments that meant something, a kiss or a caress or a softly whispered word. The only thing sustaining him in this godforsaken place was Steve. No one was going to take that from him. 

When he finished his cigarette, he moved into the next tunnel and saw the boys there, playing cards by the light of a paraffin lamp. He squatted down, looked at Morita’s hand, and then asked, “So, we got any problems here?” They all stared intently at their cards. 

Monty scratched the side of his nose. “I’ve no idea what you’re referring to, Sergeant.” So that’s how they wanted to play it. All right with him.

“Just checking. I’m on watch till eight. Who’s on after me?”

Dugan raised his hand, still intently looking at his cards. Bucky nodded and went back to Steve.

Steve was already asleep, jacket bundled up under his head, stretched out on the bench. Bucky leaned back against the wall, watching him. Steve had given him the gift of his life back, just when Bucky had accepted that it was over. Maybe even wanted it to be over, because the things Zola was doing to him were worse than anything he’d seen in combat. And if the time came when he really did have to lay down his life, well, then, he was just keeping his end of a bargain he felt he’d made a long time ago.

When he looked at Steve now, Bucky could almost see that frail boy he’d been. All these months and his picture of Steve hadn’t fully altered to encompass this new person. Sometimes Bucky would turn his head to look at Steve and for just a second, the face he saw was so much smaller, so much more angular and pale. 

Maybe he saw that because he’d spent so much of his own youth taking care of Steve, constantly worried that Steve was going to die. He nearly had, too, from pneumonia when he was eleven and then again when he was thirteen, the year he’d had flu that had turned into pleurisy so bad Bucky was certain Steve wouldn’t make it back. He’d been in bed for weeks, first with the cough that wracked his little body and sweat drenching his sheets, then the pleurisy setting in and his labored breathing, his pain making him too weak to fight. Mrs. Rogers had been terrified that he would develop heart trouble or die just like the famous opera singer had, she’d told Bucky one night. The medicine she brought home from the hospital wasn’t much better for Steve, it knocked him out to the point of delirium, but Bucky would stay with Steve when his ma had to work and Mrs. Ellis next door couldn’t be there, trying to get him to eat or drink, help him to the toilet, soothe his pain away as much as he could, which wasn’t much at all.

Bucky had gone to church and asked Father Joe if you could make bargains with God. If you could ask for someone else to live, someone who was better than you and the best person you knew and who would someday make the world a better place, and could He take you instead, and was that a sin? Because he needed to make that deal, needed God to take Steve’s sickness away and make him whole again, and He could take Bucky any time He wanted, just make sure Steve’s okay and strong enough to go it alone by himself. 

Father Joe told him that no, you couldn’t ask God for that, God doesn’t bargain with people because if He needs someone, He will call them and it’s not for us to decide. But God knew, he said, that you would give your life for someone else, and He’d remember. Bucky didn’t think that was right; he thought God should listen and it was a good deal. 

When Steve did get better, Bucky had wondered if God had listened and was just biding His time. Going to war, knowing Steve was safe, had felt like he was keeping up his end of that deal, because if he had to die in combat, at least he knew that Steve was all right at home. Only now that Steve was here, Bucky didn’t know what that signified. He would walk into a fire if it meant saving Steve, he would jump on a grenade himself or step in front of a bullet and never give it a second thought. As long as what he did saved Steve, who was meant for better things.

Bucky leaned over Steve, brushed back a lock of his hair, and shook his shoulder. “Hey, Chicken Little. The sky’s not falling.”

Steve rubbed his eyes, mouth curving in a relieved smile. God, he loved Steve’s mouth, that delicious lower lip that was always so rosy pink and that Bucky wanted to suck into his own mouth like a Lifesaver. “You sure about that?”

“Sure as I’ve ever been. Like I said, we’re all a bunch of idiots. It’s us following you, not the other way around, so you want my advice, just move on and ignore it. Keep being their leader.”

Bucky had hitched himself to a burning, brilliant star back when they were kids. Steve was the incandescent center of his existence, and he was perfectly happy with that. Some things were worth sacrificing for.

He pulled a bench up next to Steve’s and curled up on his side, rifle between them. Steve reached over and ran his fingers along Bucky’s beard, smiling. 

“Go to sleep, jackass,” Bucky said fondly, and wrapped his hand around Steve’s.

 

****

 

When Steve wakes in the morning, he fully expects that Bucky won’t be there, but he is -- lying on his stomach, facing Steve, and his right arm over Steve’s chest. He puts his hand over Bucky’s, rubbing his thumb along his knuckles. Despite everything that happened in the night, they must have both gotten some sleep, because Bucky seems as calm and rested as he could be, all things considered. Steve stays that way for a while, until he has to pee so bad that he slips Bucky’s arm off him as carefully as he can.

It’s late enough in the morning that Steve shouldn’t get back in bed, as tempting as it is. Instead he calls Bruce Banner.

“Bucky had a very bad night last night. He’s still asleep and I’m not sure what he’s going to feel like when he gets up. He’s kind of a mess.”

“Mess how?” Banner asks.

“He...remembered some things, really bad things, about that day. About people he killed at the Triskelion. A flashback. It was like he was trying to claw off his skin, and he smashed the back of his head repeatedly into a sharp corner. There was a lot of blood and just...it was really bad. I put some bandages on, but he really needed stitches, I think, only I can’t see that happening.”

Banner’s really quiet on the other end of the phone. Then he says, “What’s he like now?”

“He’s sleeping. Um, in my bed. He’s been coming to check on me at night and then the past couple nights he stayed with me. We both slept better. He had his arm over me when I woke up.”

“Huh. Okay.” More silence, and Steve can hear him moving things around. He must be in his lab. “Listen, Steve, I know you might not want to hear this, but maybe this is a good thing? I’m not a psychologist, this isn’t my area of expertise despite the fact that Tony’s always trying to get me to be one to him, but maybe this is some kind of catharsis, or a breakthrough for Bucky. Since he’s been hanging out with me, he’s changed a lot -- he’s starting to feel things he hasn’t felt since the 1940s. Like a stopper’s been pulled from a bottle. Those feelings have to go somewhere.”

“I’m worried that it’s me who’s making it worse. I know he hates that I fuss. Maybe I’m making him worse.” He thinks of telling Bucky that he can reach the shore. Right now Steve’s not even sure he believes there is one.

“I can tell you with absolute certainty that’s not true. Listen, Tony and I have been working on his chemistry, and we think we’ve got some ideas about what they did to him. So let’s just play it by ear today. If he wants to come down, encourage it. I’ll try to be business as usual, tell him about what we’ve found. I think information makes him feel better. In the meantime, you should ask Sam about this. He really knows a lot more about PTSD than I do and he might have some ideas.”

“I will.” 

Bruce waits for a beat, and then asks, “Do you want me to run all this by you before I talk to him?”

Steve responds with a quick “No. Everything has to be his choice. Whether you tell me anything, or do anything...it has to be on his say-so. I feel bad enough talking about him like this, but I’m just at sea after last night.”

“Gotcha,” Bruce says.

He hangs up, tiptoes back into the bedroom, and starts picking up stuff to throw in the laundry. In the light of day the blood on the floor and dresser is so much more vivid. 

_This is my life now._ Steve is half in and half out of a relationship with Sam, Bucky is here and yet as far away as he could be, and Steve is a soldier with no war to fight. 

For so long, he’d struggled with the idea of who he was without a war. Told himself that he’d enjoyed not being a soldier, not fighting. Looking at all this blood, Steve realizes that now he’s in the biggest fight he will ever undertake, and he’s not sure he can win. 

When he had mourned Bucky’s loss, he had mourned the loss of himself, too -- Bucky had defined him for so much of his life, utterly and completely. Before the serum, Bucky had sometimes quite literally kept him alive; after the serum, he’d helped Steve create his new identity as Captain America. Who was he without Bucky? he’d asked himself then, and there’d been no echoing answer. He’d been a stranger to himself, one who could make the choice to crash a plane into the ice and let go. What if Bucky’s lost forever, though? What if this is all there is, for Bucky and for himself? 

Steve scrubs at his eyes, picks up the soggy mess from the floor, and tosses things in the washing machine. 

He grabs a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and takes them into the bathroom to change, trying to avoid waking Bucky. Brushes his teeth, runs a comb through his hair. As he’s buttoning his fly, Bucky says, “You don’t have to be quiet. I’m awake.” He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him through the doorway. The wounds on his face and arms stand in stark contrast to his pale skin, and there are bruises now to go with them. Steve can take the lashings of Bucky’s anger and frustration, but he can’t take this. He’s as scraped and flayed inside as Bucky is on the outside.

He starts to pull his shirt over his head, but Bucky points at Steve and says, “Is that--”

Thanks to the way he heals, Steve rarely scars, but the gunshot wound in his abdomen is still only slowly shading down to pink all these months later. Steve stands frozen, staring at Bucky’s face, which is contorting with anguish. 

“Bucky, don’t do this to yourself. Don’t go there.” Steve steps into the bedroom, pulling the shirt on, and stands in front of him. Tries to take his hand, but Bucky jerks it away, then pushes Steve’s shirt up, fingertips grazing the scar. “It’ll be gone in a few more months. It’s okay now.”

Bucky focuses on Steve’s face, his eyes wet, bloodshot. “What happened? After.” He doesn’t take his hand away.

Steve smoothes Bucky’s hair, attempting in vain to ignore the hand on his belly, the knowledge of Bucky’s skin against his. He sighs, deep, hollowed out with regret. “They found me on Roosevelt Island, where you left me. Natasha and Nick and Sam. Took me to the hospital and operated on me. Stitched me up. I healed, you know how quickly I heal. No one believed me at first that it was you who pulled me out. But I knew.”

“I didn’t know why. I just...I thought I had to help you.”

“I’m really glad you did.” Steve laughs, abashed. “Obviously.”

Bucky lays the flat of his palm against the scar. Heat flares up in his belly. The last thing he wants is to sexualize any of this, it’s not fair to Bucky or to him, but Bucky’s touch is distressingly arousing. Bucky leans forward and kisses the scar, slides his hand around to the small of Steve’s back. His lips are cool and soft, breath gauzy as he kisses around the scar. Steve’s legs have dissolved into rubber, his hand trembles as he puts it on Bucky’s shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” Bucky says against his skin, and kisses him on his sternum. 

Hearing the words snaps Steve out of it, and he steps backward abruptly. “Don’t. You don’t -- you shouldn’t do that.”

Bucky stares up at him, open and earnest, confused. “I thought we were lovers. You said.”

“That -- that was a long time ago. You don’t. This isn’t a good idea.” Shame warms his skin, he’s hard already and that’s got to be obvious to Bucky, but he can’t allow Bucky to do this. To try to appease him that way. 

His eyes grow dark and he stands, almost glaring at Steve. 

Steve swallows hard, over and over. How does he explain this to Bucky? “You don’t owe this to me. It’s just...everything that happened last night and you feel guilty. You don’t want this.” Steve can’t believe he’s pushing Bucky away, but he doesn’t want to be the guy who takes advantage of Bucky’s guilt.

“You don’t know what I want.”

“I know enough to know that -- that you’re mixed up right now.” And that Bucky’s mouth was on his skin and he was touching him and... Steve inhales, waits a beat. “Please. You don’t know what this does to me. It’s not right. Not this way.” He yanks his shirt down all the way and stumbles forward out of the room. When he glances back toward Bucky, he’s standing there with his head down. Nothing is right here, not rejecting Bucky, not going through with...whatever was happening. A choice with no choice.

Steve heads to Sam’s as fast as he can. Sam’s sitting at his computer when he comes in, turning around as he hears Steve enter. Then he cocks his head sideways, eyes wide. “Whoa. Who’s killing puppies?”

“That obvious, huh?” Steve gets a glass of water, his heart still pounding. 

“Why do I have a feeling this is a long story?”

Steve sits, resting his elbows on his knees, and tries to smile -- he’s pretty sure it doesn’t work, though, judging by the “you’re ridiculous” face Sam is making. So he tells Sam the whole story, his eyes focused on the floor or his hands or his feet because he’s almost too embarrassed to look at him, constantly sipping water because his mouth feels like the Sahara.

For once, there’s no teasing from Sam. “That must have been really painful for you,” he says, and puts his hand on Steve’s arm. 

“I don’t know what to do.” He wishes someone could give him a clear objective, just tell him exactly what steps to take.

“Who would?” Sam sits back in his chair, taps his fingers on the desk for a little while. “This is so far outside my area it ain’t funny, but yeah, I mean, I think Bruce has the right idea. If he’s getting back some of the emotions he used to have with those memories, he’s trying to figure out how to process them. And that’s going to bring up all kinds of other shit for him, like the people he killed. He doesn’t have control over anything right now, you know? It’s like it’s all just coming at him from every direction, and it’s pouring out of him too, memories and guilt and confusion.”

“Is this...is this what they mean by acting out?”

“Maybe.” Sam shrugs. “Who the hell knows. He was alone all those months, trying to piece things back together, and now he’s here with you. Those emotions are coming back to him because you’ve come back to him. That’s just a theory. It’s all I got, though. Steve, you have to remember this doesn’t go in a straight line. It’s up and down and around -- sometimes you’ll think it’s going well, and then there’ll be a setback. It’s nobody’s fault. Well, nobody’s except those fucking monsters who did this to him.”

“I told him last night that I thought you were falling in love with Natasha. He went rigid for a second, didn’t say anything. And I couldn’t help wondering if that had something to do with him...coming on to me this morning.”

Sam arches an eyebrow at him. “I’m that obvious, too, huh?”

“Would it be weird to say I sort of expected it?” 

“Is this gonna be the nicest, most civilized breakup in history?” Sam’s grinning ear to ear. “I...look, man, this has been one of the most amazing times I’ve ever had. I can’t even tell you. You changed my freaking life, Steve. And I meant what I said before, about us always being friends. We’re gonna be friends, right?” 

Steve takes his hand, laces his fingers through Sam’s. “Try getting rid of me.”

“I want you to be happy, Steve. That’s, like, all I’ve ever wanted. Just for you to be happy. But I kinda feel like I’m leaving your side at the time you need help the most.”

“No. No, you’re not. I’ve been more than a little -- what was that word Clint used the other day? Monomaniacal.”

“No one’s gonna blame you for that. So what’s the plan? You gonna go back and talk to him or avoid him all day? You know which one I’d like you do, but I know which one you’ll probably do.”

“How do I talk to him, though? Now he feels like shit, and I feel like shit, and we’re both going to be on eggshells again. I just don’t know what he’s thinking.”

Sam shoves his chair back, hauls Steve up. “I don’t think he does either. Let’s go get a coffee or something. Get out of the building, get some fresh air.” He grabs his wallet and says, “Listen. I can’t even begin to understand what’s happening here. But maybe now that he’s experiencing emotions again, he just wants to remember what it felt like. To love you. To be loved.”

Steve hadn’t thought about that. How much Bucky might want to reconnect his memories and what he’s read to feelings and sensations. “What would I do without you?” he says to Sam. 

“Fortunately for you, dumbass, you’ll never have to find out.”

 

Bucky stares at himself in the mirror, cataloging the wounds on his face, torso, arms. He’s had worse. Though he’s never inflicted them on himself before. Right now, he doesn’t remember a lot about last night. Just waking up and hearing Steve talking softly to him, putting him in the shower. So much blood on his hands. The pain in his head radiating out like a shock wave. And then Steve putting him to bed, the two of them talking about when he’d died. 

He’d awakened in the night to find himself pressed against Steve, head on his shoulder. Though Bucky had moved away, every time he opened his eyes, he’d be back up against Steve, who had his arm around him. And Bucky had...wanted. To touch Steve, to inhale the scent of him, to have Steve’s hands on him. To feel something good on top of the pain, maybe wipe it all away. 

Seeing himself now, though, he can see why Steve turned away. He looks like someone you’d walk to the other side of the street to get away from. He looks like the walking nightmare he actually is. What must it have been like for Steve to see him clawing at his skin like that? Though some of the mess has been cleaned up, there are still blood spatters here and there, the upended first aid kit in the bathroom, sheets spotted with blood and smears of ointment. 

This is all he gives to Steve in exchange for such kindness. Piling misery upon misery because that’s all he has left to offer.

He can dress his own wounds, at least the ones he can see, so he changes bandages, cleans up as best he can. His metal fingers are cool against his burning skin. In his own room he puts on fresh clothes. He’s late for Banner’s, but instead he picks up the phone and calls Sam. Maybe it’s the wrong thing to do, but Sam had said to call if he needed to talk to someone else. And he has no idea how to talk to Steve now. Yellow, red. No sights on target.

When Sam answers, he draws a blank on what to say. _Hi, it’s Bucky?_ Sam must know it’s him because he waits on the other end of the line, patient. Finally he ekes out, “You said I could call.” 

“Hey, man,” Sam says. “Are you okay? What can I do for you?”

“I just. You said I could call to talk to someone else.” This is much harder than he expected. He presses his fingers to his eyes, feeling another headache coming on. “Is Steve with you?”

“He just left. Do you want me to come to you, or do you wanna meet me down here? Or we could go out. Maybe a change of scenery will help.”

They could go out. They _should_ go out, this place has been closing in on him for days, so he arranges to meet Sam in the lobby. Steve had told him he could go anywhere he wants, and it’s time to get out. He texts Banner “later today.”

Fortunately Sam’s already in the lobby waiting when he gets down there. He asks if Bucky wants to get some coffee, and Bucky raises an eyebrow and glances pointedly at the coffee cup already in his hand. “Oh, yeah, right. Well. It’s not like I can’t go again.”

As they walk, Sam keeps looking over at him, but doesn’t say anything. Bucky’s good with that, he’s trying desperately to corral his stray thoughts and plan what he needs to say. When they get there, Sam orders for them both, finds a table near the rear exit, and when they sit down, he leans way back in the chair, one arm on the table, legs spread wide. Bucky recognizes the body-language tactic, making yourself open and relaxed so your subject will unconsciously mirror you. Bucky doesn’t.

Sam suddenly reaches across the table and grabs Bucky’s hand, where he has been flipping his smallest knife through his fingers without even realizing he was doing it. “Put that thing away, man. You can’t do that here.” His voice isn’t scolding, just concerned. 

“I didn’t even...” He slides the knife back in his right leg cargo pocket. Maybe he shouldn’t be let out in public. Bucky looks down at his hands and wonders if he’s done this before. He must be terrifying to other people.

“It’s okay. No one saw yet.” Sam pauses, looks him over. “Wow. You’re a mess,” he says, but affectionately, with a slim smile. “I saw Steve this morning. He told me you had a really bad night. Flashbacks. Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

Bucky nods. “I think so.”

“But you don’t know?” Sam asks, almost coaxing. “It’s okay not to know. It’s okay not to even actually talk, if you don’t know what you want to talk about. Me, I can talk enough for two people anyway.”

Bucky sips his coffee, looks around at the people in the shop. Everyone’s so normal. They have lives. They have control over themselves. No one’s afraid of them. “Is he afraid of me?”

Sam’s brow wrinkles. “Steve? No, no, he’s not afraid of you. He’d never be afraid of you. Shit, even when you two were fighting to the death, I don’t think he was afraid of you, once he knew who you were. I think he’s afraid _for_ you. It’s hard to watch someone hurt themselves. It’s even harder to know how badly they’ve been hurt and you’re powerless to do anything about it.”

“I don’t think...I’ve ever done that before. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Sam says almost the same thing Banner said to him. “There isn’t anything wrong with you, dude. Not in the way you’re thinking. You’re having experiences that aren’t at all uncommon for people who’ve had extreme trauma. And your trauma is pretty much the worst of the worst of the worst.”

“I knew that day that I had to...I knew I was supposed to save him. I knew I knew him. But they said I didn’t and then they took it away from me. Some of the things they took, I see them now, like they’re in my peripheral vision or I’m looking at a fogged mirror. Blurry and out of focus. It hurt so much when they took it away. It always hurt so much and I just didn’t want to-- to--”

“Barnes,” Sam says quietly, “take your time. It’s okay.”

“It was better to hurt him because then I wouldn’t get hurt. Safer. I almost killed him. All of you.”

Sam drinks his coffee, thinks for a while. “He knows that. _We_ know that. We didn’t know then, but we saw that chair. We’ve read that file.”

“Why is he trying so hard to help me? He shouldn’t. He feels guilty because I fell. But I was never angry at him for that. I would have done it a thousand times if it meant saving him. I remember that. That person I was -- it was inside him, a part of him. He remembers. But I’m not him anymore, and it’s just going to hurt Steve to keep trying to make me better.” His hand flexes with a need to hold his knife.

Sam stares at him. His face is...sad. Upset. The way everyone seems to look when they hear about these things. He sits up and leans forward. “Well, we both know he ain’t gonna stop. Because he’s exactly like you. He’d fall a thousand times too if it meant he could help you get better.”

“I don’t know what better even looks like.” 

That makes Sam laugh out loud. “Well, look in a mirror, man. Because I can tell you you’re a thousand times better right now than you were when you first showed up on that rooftop, and you’re ten thousand times better than you were the last time he saw you. Look, you and he both need to understand that healing from trauma isn’t linear. You go forward, you go back sometimes too. And it’s not just mental stuff. Don’t you feel better, physically at least?”

“Yes.” He knows that, intellectually. But inside himself, he sees no progress, or it’s so slow and minuscule it’s like he’s trying to come out of cryosleep, foggy and uncertain, waiting for orders, direction.

“And look at you now, you’re talking and walking and having actual human interactions. Go you.”

Bucky is starting to understand why Steve fell for Sam. He’s all the things that Steve would need, should want to keep in his life. Not this wreck of a human being, just because he loved him once a long time ago.

“Bucky,” Sam says, “did it ever occur to you that Steve has just as much blood on his hands, maybe even more, than you do? That he knows that, and it’s been really hard for him to deal with? He was running ops with SHIELD for over a year. Think about that. And a lot of people died that day because they chose to fight on his side. Helping you...it helps _him_. I’ve seen that firsthand.”

Bucky chews on his bottom lip, hating how selfish he is that he forgets how much Steve is suffering. “Do you think it’s possible to fall in love with someone you loved before, even if you don’t remember feeling that way?”

Sam stares at him for a really long time, enough that Bucky fidgets in his seat. “You know what I think? I think they did everything they could to take away the things inside you that made you who you are, and made you love Steve. But there’s something too deep in there to get gone all the way. They might have tried really hard, but they couldn’t totally dig it out. You wouldn’t have been on that roof that day if you didn’t remember something of how you felt. Maybe you can’t see it yet, maybe it doesn’t have form or substance, but it’s still there.”

Bucky finishes his coffee and stands up. He’s cut himself open too much already, and he doesn’t want to bleed in public anymore. “I need to go home now.”

Nodding, Sam gets up and follows him, keeping close but not too close. “I’m really glad you called me, Bucky,” is all he says when they get to the tower, and squeezes his shoulder, before sending him up on the elevator. He’d meant to ask Sam about Natasha, to politely show interest in another person’s life, but that can wait, he supposes.

 

Before he goes to see Banner, Bucky heads to the roof in an attempt to pull himself back into place. He’s hollowed out, it’s like air’s moving through the places bones and muscle should be, the way bitter winter wind used to pierce their apartment walls. He lies down on a bench in the cold sunshine on the roof, staring at the blue sky. The back of his head hurts like hell, but he balls up one of his jackets for a pillow and crosses his arms over his chest. 

As often as Steve was sick, that’s not the way Bucky recalls him most times. As if his mind, or maybe his heart, refused to see only that part of him so many others were locked on to, chose instead to see the scrappy fighter and the thoughtful artist, the boy who loved to go to Ebbets Field for a game or into the city to explore. Who sat in the sun and read history books or sketched, who loved to tell stories with words or a pencil. 

But Bucky thinks about that scar on Steve’s abdomen, the one he put there. What it felt like to touch his fingers to Steve’s skin, press his mouth to it. And he remembers now, the baffling years he’d longed to do the same thing with Steve then, had ached for the knowledge of him without understanding what it meant.

How he couldn’t tell Steve that he wanted to know what it felt like to do more than just throw an arm around his shoulders on the way home from class, or ruffle his hair when he made a smart remark. To be the way he was around girls, but with Steve. The only time Bucky could truly touch him was when he was sick, wiping sweat away, laying cold cloths against Steve’s forehead, helping him change his sweat-soaked pajamas because he was too weak to do it on his own. And that was not the same, because Bucky was taking care of Steve. Nothing sexual about it, despite the intimacy. He remembers how ice gripped his heart when he heard Steve’s agonized, shallow breaths that wouldn’t pull air into his feeble lungs because it hurt so much, and he didn’t know if at some point Steve would simply stop breathing altogether.

Steve was so strong. All anyone saw when they looked at him was frailty, weakness. They didn’t know the strength it took to fight being so sick, to come out the other side when everyone’s prepared to give you last rites. 

Bucky opens his eyes, his heart beating too fast. Reminds himself he’s on the roof of Stark Tower, in Manhattan, in the twenty-first century, not a tenement in Brooklyn and Steve isn’t going to die on him. The fear slowly releases its grip on his heart, and he breathes against it, the way Banner’s taught him. 

“Hey, Buck,” Steve says, standing at the foot of the bench. Bucky sits up abruptly, stunned. No one has ever crept up on him like that before. Steve kneels down next to him, his hand on his leg. “You were lost in a daydream, it seemed like. I was looking for you. I have go away for a few days. I know it’s short notice, and I’m really sorry. There’s some...SHIELD business to take care of that can’t wait. I guess there’s always going to be SHIELD business, even now.” He smiles up at Bucky. This much he remembers: Steve always smiles when he’s sad. “I wish I didn’t have to go. I’m a little worried about you having another flashback.”

“I won’t hurt myself.” Steve squints at him, then nods -- he doesn’t believe it, though. “I was alone all those months, idiot. I’ll be okay.” He knows what’s going through Steve’s mind -- if he was fine all those months alone, then it must be Steve’s presence that’s making him crash and burn. Bucky doesn’t want to say it, but he has to. “Are you leaving because of this morning? You’re not to blame.” Yellow, red, red.

“No, it’s not that.” 

It’s hard to read the look in his eyes. He used to understand the meaning behind every flicker of Steve’s eyes, every turn of his mouth, he remembers that clearly now. Bucky puts his right hand on Steve’s cheek, and Steve flinches back. Fucking hell. He really loves bearing these goddamn crosses. Bucky traces his thumb across Steve’s lower lip. “I waited so long for you,” he says. 

Steve’s voice is a croak, Bucky can see the pulse hammering in his throat, his Adam’s apple moving up and down with the effort to swallow. “What’s that?”

“For you. I waited so long to tell you how I felt. You were so sick and I wished all the time that I could have touched you when you weren’t sick. Christ almighty, Steve. _Years_. Just waiting.”

Bucky leans forward and presses his mouth to Steve’s, cups the back of his head so Steve won’t pull away. Steve doesn’t move, doesn’t kiss him back. He presses harder, trying to will the memory of what it was like to kiss Steve into his mind, to know if what he feels now is the same thing he felt then. There’s a sound coming from deep in Steve’s throat, almost a wheeze, like when he tried to get air into those lungs that wouldn’t work right. 

Bucky pulls away, sees that Steve is still staring at him, hasn’t even closed his eyes. “You don’t--”

“You don’t know what I want.” 

There’s a flintiness in Steve’s eyes, the way he looked when he was ashamed of himself for being small and frail, or when he was afraid of them being found out after they had finally become lovers. Steve clears his throat, says, “I have to go. We’re wheels up in forty.” Then he grabs Bucky by the arms, hauls him down to straddle his lap, rains kisses over his face, his neck. “Tell me what you want, then. What do you want? Tell me.”

Bucky smiles, and it’s as if -- as if something bright’s bursting up inside him, a window opening on to morning sunlight. He kisses Steve again, and this time Steve’s mouth meets his, parts, his breath in Bucky’s mouth, tongue slipping past teeth. He kisses him for as long as he can before Steve makes a frustrated little grunt that means he has to go. Pulling back, Bucky says, “I want to remember you. All of you.” Steve presses his forehead to Bucky’s, nods. 

“I have to go.” They both stand up, and Steve touches his chin, kisses the corner of his mouth.

“Be careful. I’m not there to watch your back.” Bucky watches Steve head for the elevator. “Come home.” Steve nods again, and disappears around the corner. 

 

****

 

Steve hung on to the side of the train, his face pressed against the freezing metal. He should be looking for the spot Bucky fell, marking it in his mind, but he couldn’t open his eyes. The tears were already frozen on his lashes. The blasted-out side of the train rattled, and he knew he had to get back inside or he would fall, too. 

They could go back. They could search. They had to search. Bucky could not be gone 

_could not_

_could not_

He stumbled into the car, ran forward to the head of the train. Gabe would be alone, he might need help. How could Steve help Gabe, though, when he’d just watched Bucky torn from him and falling down, down into a snowy canyon? How could he do anything at all?

_This is a test._

_Is this a test?_

He found Gabe with a gun to Zola’s head. Steve had seen him only from a distance the night he’d rescued Bucky, a tiny, shadowy figure, rabbity and frightened, and then across the gangway, but his attention had been almost entirely on Schmidt. Now Steve could see him clearly, the malevolence subsumed by his terror, and Steve reached forward to grab him by the neck. The train was slowing down; Gabe must have ordered them to stop. He could throw him from the window, still.

“Cap, what the hell?” Gabe said, startled. He looked from Steve to Zola, back again, and then said, “Put him down, Cap.”

Steve just kept squeezing Zola’s fleshy little throat as he thrashed and kicked into the air. 

“Where’s the sarge?” Gabe shouted at him. “What the hell are you doing?”

When Steve didn’t say anything, Gabe stepped back. “Oh, no, no. No, that can’t be.” But he shifted his rifle to point at Steve. “You gotta put him down, Cap. He’s our objective. You have to put him down. Don’t make me do this.”

Of course he was right. He was right, but Bucky was gone and he had the man responsible. Steve tossed Zola against the wall like a child’s toy when it’s no longer of interest. Scraped his eyes back toward Gabe, who was staring at him in stunned alarm. He knew what they had to do -- back the train up, rendezvous with the rest of the squad, bring Zola back to the SSR. That was their mission. But missions failed. Targets died. It happened all the time in war, you couldn’t predict the variables.

Steve knelt down in front of Zola, twisting his arm until he screamed. “Steve, stand down,” Gabe said behind him. “This isn’t who you are.” His voice was so quiet and sad that it made an impact, cut through the noise in Steve’s head. “We have to rendezvous. We have to get him back.” When he didn’t move, Gabe said, “This isn’t what Barnes would want.”

“You don’t know what Bucky would want.” They hadn’t seen what Bucky’d endured in that lab, they hadn’t heard the sharp, brittle edge in his voice when he said he wanted to wipe Hydra off the face of the earth. They didn’t know Bucky, no one did, not like Steve.

Steve punched Zola’s piggy face and knocked him out. He sat on the floor, back against the cold metal, legs splayed out in front of him, and stared up at Gabe. “Take care of it.” Gabe hesitated, not certain what the command meant, but then followed the plan. Steve remained, unable to move, his chest heaving, choking back the sobs that threatened to burst out of his lungs. Stayed there until Gabe told him to get up, they had to move now. 

He followed the tracks along the mountainside, Gabe frog-marching a bruised Zola behind him, whimpering and stumbling at gunpoint. They walked. The snow hit his eyes, freezing on his lashes, or maybe it was still tears. They walked some more.

When Steve and Gabe finally reached the rest of the boys, it took them a few minutes to comprehend that Bucky was not there. They looked from Steve to Zola, back and forth, seeing his battered face and the bruises in the shape of fingers on his fleshy neck. Gabe shook his head and they all stared down at the ground.

Steve kept walking. He couldn’t endure hearing anyone claim that Bucky was gone and they wouldn’t be able to find him. They could search, they would search. They had to search. 

He couldn’t remember where Bucky fell. It all looked the same. He dropped to his knees, letting his shield fall. The Commandos could take the prisoner back. Steve would stay here and search. That was something he could do. He could climb down those canyon walls in this body, he could withstand the cold.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and Dernier said, “Steve.” He had never called Steve by his first name, only _capitaine_. “We have many days journey ahead, yes? We must go.”

Steve didn’t move, stayed kneeling on the sharp gravel dusted with snow. 

_This is a test._

_Is this a test?_

 

****

 

Something about Steve leaving throws off Bucky’s equilibrium. Not that he had much of that to start with, but he’s agitated the rest of the day, barely listening as Bruce fills him in on what they’ve found in his blood chemistry, and what they want to do about it. He’s glad Banner stayed behind, doesn’t seem to be involved in SHIELD business, but all he can really think about -- all he wants to think about -- is that he kissed Steve and Steve kissed him. 

The apartment feels empty without Steve there, which is ridiculous, since for so many of the weeks Bucky’s been here, Steve was gone for all but a few hours. The cleaning staff have come and most of the evidence of his episode is gone. What must they think of the people who live here? Bucky busies himself with the mundane things, laundry and stacking dishes and tidying up, forcing himself into something resembling a normal routine. Banner says that’s the best thing to do in these situations.

Bruce put a better dressing on the wound at the back of his head, but everything’s itching, so he takes a shower before bed, like always. There’s a hazy picture of Steve that morning, of him pulling his shirt down over the scar, bouncing around in his head. A sense memory of pressing his lips to Steve’s scar, the way his fingers coasted over the taut skin and hard muscle of Steve’s hip and back. The way Steve’s heart pounded so loud Bucky could hear it in the back of his head.

Heat floods his lower torso, igniting something inside him that pulses and throbs, and he realizes he’s hard, that his hand has drifted to his cock. Embers he thought had been stamped out decades ago, unexpectedly burning again. Underneath him, his legs wobble, his metal hand clutches the shower wall to steady himself as he strokes his hand up and down the length of his cock. This is as foreign to him as the kiss, his body an alien for so long he can’t remember knowing this response. Only a vessel to hold the inner gears of a weapon. Trembling increases with pleasure increases with movement. Bucky had assumed that the drugs and chemicals, the changes they’d made to him, had killed anything that could manifest as desire or excitement, but his body is alive now with sensation and pleasure. He pictures Steve’s mouth, his hands, his deep blue eyes, as he strokes himself, delicious tension that coils up through his cock to his belly until climax hits him like a burning brick right between the eyes. His head snaps back, metal hand piercing through the tile and wall beneath, hips arching upward. Huge, rolling waves engulf him, knocking breath out of gasping lungs, and he slides down the wall onto his knees. 

He stays that way for some time, letting the exquisite throbs subside, expanding his lungs for deeper and deeper breaths. It’s almost too much, he’s lit up inside like white phosphorous and his skin painfully registers every single drop of water and wisp of air. As it subsides, he’s left with a warm, sensual hum throughout muscle and bone, and he absorbs it, letting it mute his pain. Eventually he gets out, towels off slowly, shaky and stunned to discover he can feel something like this at all.

Steve’s left his heavy leather jacket behind, and Bucky puts it on over his pajamas, inhaling his scent, and crawls into Steve’s bed. He doesn’t know whether he’ll sleep well in Steve’s bed alone, but it can’t hurt to try. His body still thrums with the impressions of pleasure, and he drifts off, remembering contentment, remembering desire.

One more day Steve’s gone, and then another. Bucky tries to keep to a routine. The third day he goes to Banner’s and there’s a woman there, tall with freckles and strawberry hair done up in a ponytail. Banner introduces her as Pepper Potts, and he remembers reading about her, she’s Stark’s girlfriend and the CEO of his company. She seems nothing like the cool businesswoman in the pictures. 

“I hope you don’t mind, but when I’m in town, Bruce and I do yoga together,” she says, extending her hand, which he absently shakes. “I’ve heard a lot about you from Steve, and I wanted to meet you. But if it’s uncomfortable to have me around, I totally understand.”

He shrugs, says, “Any friend of Steve and Bruce’s...” and tries on a smile, but he’s sure it doesn’t come out right.

They start with meditation, and at first he’s acutely aware of her presence, has trouble shaking it off, like an itch just below the skin that won’t go away because it’s too deep to scratch. Eventually he settles in to it, and when they move on to yoga, he watches her out of the corner of his eye, her serenity a place to focus on. He thinks Banner’s responding to that quality in her as well, they clearly have a level of friendship that he’s not used to seeing in people of opposite gender, or at least, wasn’t when he was young. Romanov and Barton seemed to have that, too, and it intrigues him. 

When they’re done, she asks, “I’ve heard you like the rooftop garden?” He nods.

“That’s one of my favorite places, too, when I’m here. But we’ve kind of neglected it. Maybe one of these days you and I can meet up there and you can tell me what we should do with it.” It’s hard to see it as neglected; she’s angling for a way to talk to him alone, offer him something to do. Steve must absolutely adore her.

“Where do you go when you’re not here?” He’s curious why she wouldn’t always be with Stark. Couples live their lives so differently now.

“Well, one thing that hasn’t changed is that Stark Industries is still headquartered in Los Angeles. Tony’s father loved the sunshine. And I’m overseeing the Malibu house being rebuilt while I’m there on business.” She pauses, gives him a quizzical look. “You would have known Howard Stark, wouldn’t you?”

Bucky’s been afraid of this, afraid of meeting Tony Stark, finally, and this hammers home just how much they can’t trust Bucky and what a mistake they’ve all made bringing him here. He doesn’t remember a mission to kill Howard and Maria Stark, and it’s the type of op anyone could have pulled off, but he doesn’t _know_ he didn’t do it, and they can’t know either. 

“Yes.” _Yes I knew him yes I might have killed him yes I’m still just a mindless weapon who doesn’t even remember all the people he’s murdered._ Green to yellow to red. Behind her, Banner straightens, aware that this isn’t going in a good direction. What do normal people do when conversation runs to something they don’t want to talk about? “I liked California,” he says to change the subject. “I can see why Howard would have wanted to stay there. If Steve hadn’t been here, I might have stayed there.”

“It’s nice not to have to face dreary, freezing winters, isn’t it? I guess the tradeoff is the traffic. And the horrible, horrible water.” She smiles politely and her fingertips ghost across his arm before she takes her mat and says, “I look forward to talking some more. I’ll see you tomorrow?” Bucky thinks Pepper knows that she stepped over a line she didn’t know existed, but she handles it gracefully.

Bucky stays with Banner, because he wants to know where Steve is. The fact of his absence is unsettling, as if he’s looking at a place he’s been a hundred times, but doesn’t recognize it, as if all this time he hadn’t been remembering more and more of Bucky Barnes’s past. Is this what it’s like for people when they fall in love, to take the shape of the other person, mold your life to theirs, so that you don’t know who or what you are without them?

“Why didn’t you go with Steve?” he asks. 

Bruce answers, “Because I try really hard to stay as far out of SHIELD business as possible. And it’s never a good idea to fly me on planes if you can avoid it.”

“Do you know what the ‘business’ is? Where they went? He wouldn’t tell me.”

“I really can’t say,” Bruce says, but Bucky’s not certain if he’s flat out lying or if he’s prohibited from saying. Banner’s making up some kind of medicine he wants Bucky to try, and he watches while Banner puts it together. “This is gonna taste awful, but give it a try. I really think it’ll help with that low level headache you seem to have. When Tony gets back, we’re going to talk about your arm, okay?”

He’s forgotten about the arm, the fact that it hasn’t been functioning perfectly. It’s serviceable, so he doesn’t want to think about it, or about the nerve damage where metal meets skin, which Banner finds...upsetting. In some ways, they’re more concerned about him than he is for himself. Bucky supposes it must be like the frustration he had with Steve when he was little, the way he got into fights or tried to do things he couldn’t physically, willfully disregarding the consequences of his actions. 

The rest of the day Bucky spends on the roof, cleaning up the garden where he can, before he returns to the apartment, still empty, still no word from Steve. He eats because he has to, reads, but can’t stop looking at the clock.

Like most nights, he wakes up intermittently, but then he gets a bad dream locked in memory: they had been set to blow up a Hydra outpost in the Po River valley, but Dernier had been experimenting with new fuses and the last one he’d set was twitchy. It had ignited before Steve could clear out, and he’d caught shrapnel along one side of his head, his arm badly injured. He’d stood there, blood racing down his face and underneath his sleeve, dripping from his fingertips, spreading out across the snow. Bucky had field dressed his wounds, bellowing at Steve the whole time about how stupid he’d been, enraged more with himself because he had failed to protect Steve. 

Bucky sits up and rubs at his face, his heart a bombardment inside his chest. _Something’s wrong. Steve’s in trouble._ He doesn’t know how he knows this, but he’s certain it’s true. The AI still gives him the creeps, but he says, “JARVIS, I need a twenty on Captain Rogers.”

There’s a hesitation -- can AIs hesitate? -- and then JARVIS answers, “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to provide that, Sergeant Barnes.” Who in the pluperfect hell programmed it to call him sergeant?

“On whose authority?”

“Captain Rogers and Mister Stark. I’m terribly sorry.” He grabs a wad of hair in his fist, pulls. Fuck Steve and his desperate need to coddle him. 

“I think he’s in danger. Whoever’s with him, too. Can you -- can you at least tell me if he’s all right?” It takes forever to get a response. He has never felt so helpless in his life.

“You were correct, Sergeant Barnes. They have engaged with their target, but I’m monitoring the situation as well as providing assistance, so please stand by and I’ll relay information to you presently.” 

“Can you tell me who’s with him? Does he have backup? Can I contact him?” He’s sure that Sam’s with Steve, and obviously Stark too, but he’s hoping at least Romanov is there if it’s Hydra, and Barton. _Target_ , JARVIS said. So this is a mission they’re running, not an ambush against them. More minutes tick by.

“Ah. The dust is settling, Mister Stark says. I’ve let them know your concerns. Captain Rogers has a text message I can read for you if you like.”

“Yes, please.” He’s trying not to sound as desperate as he feels. As the asset, he was never helpless. As a soldier he tried to always be in control, even when he wasn’t, so the men would stay calm. 

“It says, ‘A-OK. Go to sleep, jackass.’ I’m sorry, sir, for the insult, but that is the message.”

Bucky wants to ask a million other questions -- is he hurt? is anyone else hurt? who were they engaging with, Hydra or something else? -- but he knows that if they would shut him out of the location and the identities of the tac team, they’d shut him out of this, too. All Bucky can really do is exactly what Steve says, and go back to sleep. 

The next day Bucky is twisted with tension, waiting for Steve to get home, all but nonverbal to both Banner and Pepper. He spends most of the day in the cold rain, sitting with his knees drawn up and arms around them, rocking back and forth, hating himself for behaving like a child and powerless to stop it. When it’s dark and they’re still not back, he gives up and goes to bed. 

 

The covers shift, cool air washing over his back, and Bucky hears Steve breathing heavy behind him. Turning over, Bucky sees Steve’s face, gashed across the forehead, and there’s a huge bandage pulling the sleeve of his t-shirt tight over his left shoulder. “Jesus Christ!” Bucky snarls, and sits up in bed. “Is that a _gunshot wound_?”

“Hey to you, too.” Steve’s giving him a goofy, abashed grimace, but all that makes Bucky want to do is punch him in it. 

“What the fuck happened to you? You said SHIELD business.”

“It was.” He lies back, nursing his shoulder, and tries to put his right hand on Bucky’s cheek, but Bucky swats it away.

“Who was it, Steve? It must have been important enough to lie to me and hide your location. Did you think I would try to follow?” He can’t believe that a few days ago he was kissing Steve, because right now all he wants to do is beat the living shit out of him.

“I didn’t lie to you. Do you remember the intel you gave Natasha and Clint the other day? Natasha got a line on...on a lab. One of your sleepers, waking up. With an actual scientist in it. Do you understand what I’m saying?” 

Ice clogs his veins, chokes his lungs. “Yes, I do. But I don’t think you do.” His voice is razor wire, he’s gritting the words out between clenched teeth. “They’re never alone. They always have operatives. You are not equipped to deal with them. I am.”

“Your arm.” He puts his hand on Bucky’s metal arm. “We needed to know, Bucky. I had to know if there was anything that could...could kill you or they could find you with, once they put it all together. And we wanted to know how they did what they did to you.”

Bucky jerks his arm away, springs off the bed, hyperventilating with inchoate rage. “You needed me on your team. You needed me to watch your six, you fucking suicidal maniac.”

Obviously hurting, Steve gets up and takes a step toward Bucky, but Bucky just backs away. It doesn’t do to love someone, he thinks. Not if this is what it's like. Love is a diamond, cold and hard and brilliant and so easily fragmented with the wrong blow.

“Why are you so sore with me?” Steve says, all tense voice and anguished face. “I was trying to protect you, I wanted you safe here, where they couldn’t get to you.” He moves in on Bucky, but Bucky just shoves him hard in the chest. Steve grabs his arms, so Bucky wheels around and hits him with an elbow on the side. “God dammit, Bucky, stop it! What is your problem?”

“I was on my own for months, Steve. Months. I was fine on my own. I got rid of the active cells _on my own_. You can’t go running off after them like that. You can’t. You can’t leave me here and put yourself in danger.” Steve’s still trying to put his hands on Bucky, who keeps slapping them away.

He tries to smack Steve again, but Steve catches his fist in his palm, pushes back. “Stop it. Just stop it.” Using all his weight, Steve presses Bucky against the wall. “Listen to me. There _is_ a tracker in your metal arm. We have to see Tony tomorrow and remove it. We have more information about the protocols used on you. This will help -- the noise in your head, the pain. We can help you. I’ll heal. This is nothing.” He jerks his shoulder for emphasis.

“And now that you got to him, do you think the rest of them aren’t going to sit up and take notice? Jesus fucking Christ. You can’t stick these guys in a black site facility or a prison ship.”

Steve slides his hand up to Bucky’s shoulder. “That threat has been neutralized.”

He stares past Steve’s head. “Romanov or Barton? If you say it was you, I will fucking murder you. I won’t have you become--”

Steve’s eyes narrow. “A what? A killer? I got news for you, Bucky, I already am. I’m a _weapon_ too, just like you.” He shoves Bucky hard. “And you know what? Those pilots? That blood’s on my hands, everyone who died that day, their blood is on my hands because _I asked them to do it._ They died for me. So it’s way too late for you to worry about my compromised soul.”

Tears are spilling down Steve’s cheeks, his voice is thick and strained. “You wanna know how low someone can really be? You think I’m _so good_. Well, I’m not. Because every day since I first saw you, I have thanked God that you are still alive. Knowing every terrible thing you suffered for so long and all I can think is how selfishly glad I am that you’re still here. It doesn’t get much lower than that.”

Steve’s chest heaves, his breathing shuddery and weak. The very image of when he was young -- Steve even looks like he did then, his face contorted with frustration and confusion. Is this all they have left for each other, anger and resentment and pain? Bucky pushes Steve against the wall, puts his arms on either side of Steve’s. His metal fingers dig into the drywall. He drops his head to Steve’s shoulder.

“Why don’t you hate me? Why? It would be so much easier if you hated me. Look at the things I do. Look at what I’m making you become.”

Steve brings a hand up and strokes his hair, eyes glimmering.

“I don’t belong here, Steve. You’re coddling me and we’re all sitting here pretending I’m going to be normal again and you go off on a mission that is so far out of your depth and I can’t protect you.” He balls Steve’s t-shirt up in his fist. “You have to let go of me, Steve. It’s not good for me to be here. You didn’t take me with you because you can’t trust me. None of you can. I am what they made me. And I can’t be fixed, and you should just let me go.”

“Like hell I will,” Steve says, and grabs Bucky by the shoulders, stumbling back to the bed with him. The back of Bucky’s knees hit the edge of the bed and he sits down hard, Steve kneeling on the mattress next to him.

He pushes Bucky’s hair away from his forehead, runs the back of his hand along the blade of Bucky’s jaw. Leaning over, he presses his lips to Bucky’s temple, the hollow of his cheek, his neck. “I can’t do it again,” Steve says against his throat. “I said that I just wanted you to find your place in the world, but I know I can’t live with only that anymore. I can’t live without you again.”

Bucky yearns upward to his mouth, his fingers twisting through Steve’s hair, pulling him tight. He can smell the blood and disinfectant and graphite on Steve, can taste the coffee he’s probably been drinking the whole flight back. His mouth is liquid and supple and so hot Bucky can’t breathe. _You’re kissing Steve. Steve is kissing you._

In between kisses, Steve says his name over and over, a prayer, a hymn. Every sigh, every smile, every whisper glides across Bucky’s skin, soothing and exciting at the same time. He’s flooded with sensations, his fingers mapping the contours of Steve’s face, his mouth drinking in the taste of him. 

Steve shifts, leans back against the headboard, and pulls Bucky into his lap. He’s so solid, so _real_ that Bucky dissolves into him, arousal bubbling up inside just like the other night in the shower. He tries to note what he’s experiencing -- the flare of heat, the sensation of falling, the erratic beat of his heart -- wants to link it to some memory of the past, but it just feels so good he can’t focus on anything except the sweet pull of Steve’s mouth. It’s all slow and languid and tender, and it seems to go on forever, just kisses and sighs and smiles. Kissing Steve is a fucking religious experience, he could become a zealot and devote himself to this for the rest of his life.

Sliding a hand up under Bucky’s t-shirt, Steve flickers his fingers over Bucky’s skin as his tongue traces around the edge of Bucky’s ear. Bucky bows forward, keening with pleasure, and Steve laughs against his neck. Steve’s hand moves up to his nipple and the jolt of arousal is so strong it makes him choke.

He’s suffocating with sensation, it’s too much, he can’t breathe, can’t hear, heart’s pounding too fast, his head is too light. Red red red. He pulls away, holding Steve’s face in his hands. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I can’t -- I have to stop.”

Steve’s eyebrows draw down, he squints, that familiar worried face. “No, Buck, it’s okay. Don’t apologize. It’s okay.” His hands wrap around Bucky’s. “Whatever you want. Here.” Steve pushes him gently down on the bed, holds himself up on his right elbow. His shoulder must be killing him, and Bucky touches it tenderly, shame over the way he hit Steve earlier burning his skin. “Is this okay? Better?”

Bucky shakes his head. Inhales exhales. “Shit. I thought I was ready. I really wanted to--”

“I know. We’re not in a hurry. But I hope you don’t mind if I just lie here and stare at you stupidly and maybe kiss you once in a while.” 

Steve relaxes down onto the bed, snugs up on Bucky’s side. He can feels Steve smile against his neck. _Why doesn’t he hate me?_ He should be so frustrated with him, but instead Steve just tries to give him everything he wants, and Bucky doesn’t deserve this. 

“Stevie.”

His head shoots back, he’s shocked to hear his nickname. “Yeah?” he asks, and the joy in his voice gives Bucky an electric kick.

“I remembered you. That day on the bridge. You said my name and at first I didn’t know, but I remembered you later. And they took it away from me and it hurt so much. I didn’t want it to hurt again. That’s why I--”

“I know. It was safer not to remember.” Steve runs his fingers through Bucky’s hair, softly kisses his lips.

“You’re still my mission. Someone has to look out for you. Deal?”

“Deal.” He keeps running his fingers through Bucky’s hair, careful not to touch any of the wounds. They’re both such wrecks with their scabs and bandages and bruises.

“I suppose I ought to cut my hair, huh?” Bucky says, drowsy and fond, enjoying the tingle Steve’s fingers leave across his scalp.

“No!” Steve says abruptly, and Bucky grins at his vehemence. “I mean, I like it. It suits you and...this is who you are now. Not the other versions of you. Just this.” He watches Bucky for a while, his blue eyes so peaceful and generous, and Bucky thinks he could maybe beat this, maybe get better if Steve will just keep looking at him with those perfect eyes. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, this is how you looked when I saw you again after all that time of believing you were gone from me. Don’t cut it. I love it.”

Bucky reaches up and shoves his fingers into Steve’s spiky hair. “I like yours too. It’s very becoming.” Steve laughs, bashful all of a sudden. He leans up over Steve on his elbows, kisses his nose, then his lips. 

“Bucky,” Steve says, wrapping his hands around Bucky’s, “what you said earlier. About me hating you and not trusting you. I do trust you. And even when we fought on the helicarrier, I couldn’t hate you. Nothing could ever make me hate you.”

“You would be right to be afraid of me. No one knows what I could do. I’m the worst possible thing -- a weapon that no one knows how to turn off.” 

“That day on the bridge, I was terrified. You were relentless, and I’d never fought anyone like you, you just kept coming and coming and I really thought at one point you could beat me, that I wouldn’t be able to save Sam and Natasha.” He stops talking, kisses Bucky again. “When you came at us with your team, I remember noticing your confidence, the way you moved forward with this methodical, cocky strut before you blew me off the bridge with a grenade. You had absolutely no fear and no doubts. I was scrambling, and desperate, but I thought, that’s what I have to do -- I have to get under his skin, I have to undermine that confidence or I’m dead. He’ll get sloppy if I can.” His fingers dig into Bucky’s skin and the metal arm whirs and clicks under the pressure. “Do you remember who taught me that?” Steve taps his finger against Bucky’s chest. “You’re the reason I stayed alive, even when you were trying to kill me.”

Bucky laughs, and for the first time, it feels like a laugh should -- warm and happy. “You are such a piece of work. Jesus.” He kisses the hollow of Steve’s throat, drags his lips along Steve’s collarbone. “I was so frustrated and just _angry_. Even when they wiped me, I still had that anger, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I hadn’t felt anger or frustration about a target in...ever, really. Never even thought about myself -- no _I_ or _me_ , just the assignment. They told me level six targets, but no one ever fought back like all of you did. God, you were -- all you had was a shield. I guess he would have been proud of you, then. The old Bucky.”

“I see him in you, Buck. All the time. I know you think he’s gone, but he’s not. I’m not expecting you to be him again, I’m not. Really. But I do see him, like the underlayer in a painting. And that’s why I trust you -- because no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t get rid of the heart of you.”

An ache so strong it makes him tremble swells through him, his throat closes tight and he has to shut his eyes, he can’t look at Steve anymore. Bucky knows what this feeling is now, love spreading through him like a vine, growing around the barbed wire he’s been encased in all these years. “It’s been so dark and so cold for so long, Stevie. So. Long.”

Steve pulls him down, kisses him over and over again. “Wait for the sun. We’ll wait for it together.”

“I’d rather die than go back to that life, but sometimes I don’t know if I can keep going in this one.”

“Don’t say that,” Steve whispers in his ear. “Because I can’t live without you.”

“We’re the blind leading the fucking blind, you know that, don’t you?”

“Peggy said something to me a while ago. That none of us can go back and all we can do is our best, and sometimes the best that we can do is to start over.” Steve winds his fingers through Bucky’s hair, though he’s getting drowsy, everything that’s happened to him the past twenty-four hours finally catching up. “We’ll just stumble along together, on our way to starting over. We don’t need all the answers now. They’ll come.”

Bucky nods against Steve’s chest. Steve is so full of conviction that this time he almost believes. 

_There is a shore, and you will reach it._ Maybe he really will.


	6. Déjà Vu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s not a beast in a cage anymore, not a faceless killer, broken in a thousand pieces but sealed inside skin and passing as human. He _is_ human, his soul has finally awakened and opened its eyes.

“I don’t care if you’re Jesus Christ the Lord, I’m putting you on the list,” Tony Stark says into the air. “You’ll get it when you get it, and right now, my to-do list has higher priorities.” He pauses, turns to acknowledge that Steve, Bucky, and Bruce are standing there. “Yeah, bye. Look forward to not talking to you again.” 

Tony throws his hands up. “Politicians. I hate them with the white-hot fury of a thousand burning suns.” He raises an eyebrow and scowls at Bucky. “So, Winter Hotass, third time’s the charm?” Bucky shrugs.

For the third day in a row, they’re in Tony’s lab to remove the tracker from Bucky’s arm and make a few basic repairs. The first day, Bucky didn’t even last ten minutes. Steve wasn’t sure if he’d bolted because Tony’s personality rubbed him the wrong way or the idea of putting his arm on the table for Tony to dissect upset him -- or likely it was both. He’d gone back to his room and hadn’t come out again, even at night to sleep in Steve’s bed. They’d tried again the next day, but even though Tony’d fixed up a comfy chair and moved a smaller work table next to it, Bucky scrammed again, lasting just long enough for Tony to open a segment of the arm.

Steve had waited, but once more Bucky’d never shown. Steve had reluctantly left him alone, heeding Sam’s advice that recovery wasn’t linear and Bucky was just doing what he needed to do for himself. One step forward, two steps back. 

That morning over a silent breakfast, Steve had offered to bring Bruce along, which seemed to placate him. Steve had been trying to tamp down a growing panic that this wouldn’t happen, that sooner rather than later not removing that thing would bite them in the ass. 

Tony perches on the end of his work table, uncharacteristically solemn, and asks Bucky, “What would make you most comfortable? Because I’ll rig up whatever you need, and I should have asked sooner, but. We don’t have a lot of time to dick around.” Bucky’s mouth turns down at the corners, his eyes dart back and forth. This has nothing to do with the tracker or even his arm, Steve now comprehends. Something much bigger is playing out in Bucky’s head, and as usual, Steve doesn’t know what to do about it. 

“Let’s just do it,” he snaps. Bucky sits down in Tony’s work chair, which makes Tony bark out a laugh, then drops his arm onto the table. He looks up at Bruce for reassurance, while Bruce hauls a stool over and sits next to Bucky on his other side. 

Steve hops up on the end of the counter so he can be in Bucky’s sight line as Tony asks JARVIS for a schematic of the arm. Steve’s awed as he watches the 3D graphic take shape to show what’s inside, Tony moving it around, studying it. They listen to Tony’s steady patter as he talks himself into how he wants to approach it. 

Eventually he flips up a part of the arm just above the elbow, and Bucky’s eyes grow fierce as he stares at Bruce, who says quietly, “Don’t forget to breathe.” Bucky mimics Bruce’s deep breathing, and Steve finds himself doing the same thing, watches Bucky’s chest expand and contract, the muscles on his shoulder and real arm twitching with tension.

Tony says, “If you feel any actual pain with this, you tell me, okay? It shouldn’t hurt, but you’re the one carrying the damn thing around, so you have to tell me. Instead of, like, snapping my neck.”

Bucky stares so intently at Bruce that Steve wonders if he hears anything. As Tony gets further into the arm, he explains, “So the trick to this thing will be taking it out without actually arming it. And also making sure there’s no weird little failsafe or crazy IED attached to it that we can’t recognize. Because this is some very interesting technology. I mean, it’s beyond anything we’ve got now, but at the same time, I can see a million ways to improve this since it’s World War Two tech, make it better for you, streamlined. Your motor control is good, but I bet there’re ways to improve it without sacrificing the strength. Unless you don’t want the strength.”

Bucky looks from Bruce to Steve and back again. Steve nods at him, trying to encourage him to answer. “I don’t know,” is all Bucky says.

“Welp, you don’t have to make up your mind right now. JARVIS is recording all this and I’ll develop some prototype innards for you, we can see what you like.” If you asked Bucky if he wanted a new arm, he’d probably say it doesn’t matter, but Steve’s seen the way it drags him down on one side sometimes. Bucky’s come through so much already, the withdrawal and the emotional trauma, soldiering through it all like he doesn’t have a choice. Steve desperately wants one thing to be easier for him, one thing to be less painful. 

“I could even give you fiber optics that light up like a Christmas tree, or turn your fingers into flashlights, or hell even one where the hand vibrates, so if you and Rogers want a sex toy you’re all set up.”

“Tony!” Steve and Bruce shout at the same time. 

“What?” Tony asks innocently, still focused on Bucky’s arm. “I’m just saying, imagine a couple of _those_ fingers up your ass, Cap. Talk about lighting up like a Christmas tree. You’d thank me later.”

“Jesus!” Steve shouts, jumping off the counter, and Bruce looks like he’s about to blow a gasket, which is not a good thing, not at all. But then Steve sees that Bucky’s -- _he’s laughing_. A real honest to God laugh, watching Steve get worked up and Bruce sputter with outrage, so Steve relaxes. “You are so inappropriate -- God, Tony, just _stop talking_.”

“Suit yourself,” Tony says and shrugs, but he meets Bucky’s eyes and they exchange a look, so Steve backs off. He can see Bucky relaxing in the chair, his shoulders pulling back and down, right fingers unclenching. “Anyone wanna get me a cup of coffee? You guys are next to useless.”

Bruce pats Bucky’s knee and Bucky nods at him, and he gets up to fetch coffee. It fascinates Steve to watch Bucky’s interactions with Bruce now, how close they have become. He’s glad of the friendship. 

“And there it is,” Tony says in a dark voice, and Steve has a twisty, slithery little panic in his belly, wondering exactly what “it” is. “Something we found out about on our little excursion to Smolensk. But that quack we interrogated didn’t know enough to tell us anything useful about it.”

Bruce and Tony peer at the inside of the arm. Tony rotates the 3D rendering, does some calculations on what looks like a keyboard. He and Bruce both wear grim faces. 

Bruce pulls up his stool and puts his hand on Bucky’s real arm. Bucky stares at him, his pupils getting larger, his mouth in a tight line. “Out with it,” he says between gritted teeth.

Bruce says, “There’s like a...little reservoir inside your arm, a mini infusion pump, with a catheter line that’s threaded into a vein near your heart. They do that sort of thing for chemo patients, for example, to deliver drugs intravenously. They would have been able to keep the drugs they had you on moving through you even if you were on an extended op, so there’d be no risk of you...you know. Coming back to yourself. That’s why you went through withdrawal later. There were still trace amounts coming through that line, even after you came here, but not enough to work on you. What we were most afraid of, though, was that it might have also been hooked up to something that could kill you. Some kind of failsafe chemical.” 

Steve’s mouth feels like cotton batting and his heart’s beating like he just ran sixty miles. He knew there was something Tony hadn’t told him, but he wasn’t expecting this.

Bucky makes a disgusted noise and glares at Steve. “Why didn’t you tell me this the other night? What else are you lying about?”

“He’s not lying,” Tony says sharply. “I didn’t tell him everything. I needed to consult with Banner.”

“So is it rigged or not?” Bucky avoids eye contact with Steve, but he looks...embarrassed, maybe, for his assumption.

“That is what we are about to find out.” He and Bruce study the schematic, poke around some more, pull something out. “Here’s the tracker.” He drops it on the table and flips through multiple screens in front of his eyes, lights on something, and turns to Bruce for confirmation. 

He puts a few more tools into the arm and comes up with a long, narrow cylinder. “Looks clean. Nothing attached except the PICC line.” He drops it into the tray next to the tracker and kicks the table across the room. “Motherfuckers.” Bucky seems nonplussed at the reaction, as if he can’t understand why people should care about this.

“Can you take this line out?” Bucky asks Bruce, his voice harsh, his eyes focused on the far window. “I want everything out of me. Everything.”

“It’s better if someone who’s trained does it. It’s relatively simple but there can be complications, it’d be good for us to bring someone in here. Are you okay with that?”

There’s a hesitation in Bucky, and Steve knows what he must be thinking. “We’ll vet them and monitor them. Same as when you were in the hospital,” Steve says.

“And anyway,” Bruce says, “this isn’t exactly a typical situation, so Tony and I pretty much have to be involved. We’ll keep an eye on you.” 

Tony pokes around inside some more, then closes up the plates on the arm. “So, that’s our show for today. Thank you for your participation. I forgot to get lollipops.” He looks expectantly at Bucky, who’s flexing his fingers and forearm. “Next we need to talk about repairs and replacements. But that can wait. Been a big morning. Go take a power nap or something.” 

Bucky glances quizzically at Steve. Steve shrugs and says, “I don’t know what it means either.”

Tony rolls his eyes while Bruce laughs. It’s hard to read what Tony’s thinking, but there’s an undercurrent of anger there, and Steve’s not entirely sure what it’s about. Usually when Tony’s that obviously annoyed, it’s more important than not. 

Bucky gets up quickly, mutters, “Thanks,” in the general direction of Bruce and Tony, and beelines for the door. Steve decides to hang back rather than go after him. 

As soon as Bucky’s gone, he rounds on them. “You guys could have given me a heads up about that. So I could have told him. I thought we were clear -- he wants information about himself. He needs to make the choices about what happens to him.”

Bruce holds his hands up in the air. “Hey, I said my piece. I’m on your side, Cap.”

Tony fumes. “I know how you feel about that, you’ve only said it five thousand times. Believe me, I get it. But every day he bolted from the room, and I had no idea what was wrong, and I just -- I wasn’t even sure what we were dealing with here. I’m not omniscient. You think I didn’t consider evacuating everyone from the room and wearing my suit before I started poking around in there? Those guys were clever fuckers. Clever, sadistic, monstrous sons of bitches. All the intel and schematics in the world wouldn’t do me any good if they hid something in that arm that I couldn’t recognize as being lethal.”

Steve scrubs his hands down his face. “Is there anything else that you’re not telling me, then? Any more secrets?”

“No. His arm’ll be a little better now, but it needs fixing. Between your fight and the lightning, it’s not operating well. So he’ll have to come back here, and I’d like to have his participation. But he doesn’t seem like he’s able to cope with it.”

“Actually,” Steve says, wistful at the memory, “Bucky’s pretty good with his hands. If he’d had the opportunity, I would bet he could have been an engineer himself. I’m sure he’d like to work with you on it,” though Steve doesn’t say _if we can figure out what’s making him so spooked._ Steve stares at his own hands, remembering all the times he’d drawn Bucky’s. Dozens and dozens of sketches, because Steve thought Bucky had the most beautiful, expressive hands he’d ever seen, hands that should have been an artist’s, not a laborer’s -- or a killer’s.

“No wonder my dad liked him so much.”

“Liked him?” Bruce and Steve both say at the same time.

“Yeah,” Tony says, with a little head-shake, like he can’t believe Steve doesn’t know that. “After he came to live here, I remembered seeing his name in one of my dad’s old notebooks. I looked it up. Dad mentions him repeatedly. They really hit it off. I guess Barnes used to hang around his lab in the war room.”

Steve doesn’t remember that, and he’s ashamed that he didn’t notice. Bucky had always encouraged Steve to spend time with Peggy, to focus on his role as a CO. He never really saw what Bucky was doing with his time. Steve had done a pretty crap job of keeping track of the part of Bucky’s life that wasn’t directly related to himself.

“Huh,” is all Steve can muster, and he shrugs, starts toward the door. “I’ll let you know what he says.”

Steve has hospital appearances in the afternoon, so he changes into his uniform before he heads out. Bucky’s nowhere to be found when he gets back, so he assumes he went straight up to the roof. He leaves a note saying that he’ll be back after dinner, but he doesn’t have high expectations of seeing Bucky that night, if the past few days are anything to go by. _Healing isn’t linear,_ he reminds himself. He wishes he was better about accepting that.

 

Bucky spends a few hours in the garden before he heads back down to Stark’s lab. He lets JARVIS announce him, hovering by the door, and Stark sets down a bottle of green something-or-other and turns to him, clearly surprised. “Barnesicle,” he says, and Bucky raises an eyebrow. Stark is always using references he doesn’t understand, and it’s as irritating as a rash.

“Thanks, again, for this morning.” 

“Happy to help. What brings you back to Spacely Sprockets Incorporated?” He motions for Bucky to come in all the way, puts down his tools.

“I don’t -- I don’t remember having a mission to kill your parents.” There. He’s said it, and if Stark wants to punch him or blast him with one of those repulsor things or just stick a knife in his throat, he wouldn’t blame him. “It wasn’t the kind of thing they would usually wake me up for. They saved me for the complicated jobs, and...anyone could have done it. I’m sorry, I know how that sounds, but I don’t know any other way to say it. I don’t know for certain I didn’t do it, but I don’t remember it.”

Stark’s mouth twists around, he’s staring at Bucky like he’s a hostile who must be eliminated. “So that’s why you bugged out of here the past two days.”

“I remember most of my missions now. Some of it’s blurry, and the pictures in my mind are confusing to me. But I remember the events.”

Tony stands. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it while you’ve been avoiding me. Yeah. I noticed -- you’ve met pretty much everyone else here except me. Sit.” He motions for Bucky to sit down in one of the armchairs over to the side of the lab, and he sits down across from him.

“So, I never saw that infamous chair before. I don’t know if Steve told you, but he basically beat up the one in the D.C. bank vault. But they had one where we were the other night, in Russia. I don’t know if they ever used it on you, but they’d used it on someone. It’s one thing to know about it or see it in pictures, but it’s a completely different thing to see one up close and personal. If it’s that bad just looking at it, I don’t wanna know what it’s like to actually sit in one.”

“What’s that got to do with your parents?” It’s nice to have people sympathize with him, but Bucky fails to see the relevance.

“Nothing. Not really. It’s just, listen, I saw you that day on the roof, before Thor tried to flash cook you. The way you looked at Steve, what you’d been trying to do for him up there. And I’ve heard _a lot_ about you from everyone here, especially my three favorite people, who all seem pretty smitten with you. It sounds like you’ve come an impressively long way from that chair to here. Not much impresses me that’s not, you know, about me.”

Bucky doesn’t know what to say to that, how he’s expected to respond. And he still doesn’t see what point Stark is trying to make. He holds his hands out, palms open. 

“It’s hard for you to think about that stuff, and you believe I can’t possibly understand.”

Bucky raises his head and frowns at Tony. 

“I can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve been through. None of us can. But. Ask Steve to tell you about my time in captivity with a terrorist group. And how I had to learn to live with everything I’d done as a weapons designer and manufacturer. And the legacy I unquestioningly inherited from my dad.” Tony gives him a crooked grin.

“I don’t know that you killed my parents, either. Nothing tells us that. Not the intel we’ve gleaned, not the history of the Winter Soldier. Maybe we’ll never know. But the people who had my parents killed were the same people who targeted me with Insight. All these little accidents of fate along the line led to Steve being able to stop them that day. I think about that a lot. And how your history with him played into the endgame.”

Bucky’s silent, staring down at his hands. His pop used to always say he was good with his hands, that he could make a good future using them. He remembers the solid satisfaction of a smoothly pulled trigger and watching a Hydra soldier going down through his scope; a throat crushed beneath his bare hands as snowflakes fell on lifeless, open eyes; the gritty wet sound of a knife slipping between rib bones up into lungs. He was already a stone-cold killer before Hydra got him, already using his hands to destroy.

Tony seems to sense that he’s floundering. “Steve tells me you were good with mechanical things.”

“My pop was a cabdriver. I used to help out in the garage as a kid, they let me work there once I got old enough and there was more money.” It’s a pleasant memory, something warm, comforting. “I was always good with my hands,” he says quietly.

“My dad mentioned in his journals you hanging around in his lab during the war.”

He’s completely taken aback, could not have imagined that Howard Stark would have even thought about him much less mentioned him in a journal. “Yeah. Sometimes I had time to kill, waiting for Steve. He let me test weapons, I was really good with those.” He laughs bitterly. “I remember...the first time I saw him was at the Expo, and he had a, like a levitating car?”

“Yup. I still have it, believe it or not.”

“I couldn’t get over how someone could do that. Even though it only lasted a couple seconds.” 

“I’ll take you to see it sometime.” Tony pauses, cocks his head sideways. “How did you know Steve was in trouble the other night?”

The topic change throws Bucky. “I -- I had a bad dream. Remembered when he caught shrapnel in an explosion and was badly injured.” He swallows over and over. It’s not something he can explain, how he’s come to learn that taking care of Steve is imprinted on his bones. That it courses through him like a river. “I have to go now.” Bucky stands up and Tony seems surprised, but that’s all he can handle. He appreciates that people are trying to be kind to him, but their kindness can’t erase what he is inside.

He heads back to the apartment, finds the note Steve left. Makes himself something to eat and picks a new book off the shelf to read, goes to sit on the balcony. He’s running out of books here, thinks maybe he should pretend to be normal and go get a library card, which almost makes him laugh. Right: date of birth, 1917. Occupation: out of work assassin.

Then the weight descends, his old familiar friend, reminding himself he’s just taking up space here, dragging Steve down. 

The division he feels inside is excruciating, because Bucky wants to be with Steve, wants to touch him and kiss him and breathe him in like a hit of straight oxygen. Wants to try again to remember what it felt like to love him. It’s so tantalizingly close, he sees it creeping around the edges of his mind, emotions he can pull back through time. He’s as in love with Steve now as he must ever have been. And he should be satisfied, because that’s more than he could ever have expected. But he wants to know what those memories are like fully rendered -- they’re the barest of lines on a page, a sketch not fully formed, and he longs to see the whole painting. He’s trapped in an endless state of in-between, where he wants but when he gets it it’s too much for him to bear, where he loves but doesn’t know how to show it to the one he loves.

When it gets dark Bucky goes back to his room, closes the door. It’s not the message to send to someone you want to love, but it’s all he’s really got left.

 

Steve’s not surprised when he gets home and Bucky’s door is closed. Sam would tell him not to beat himself up about it, but he feels like he’s failed Bucky again, in some vague unspecified way. He eats dinner, watches TV, waits for a while to see if Bucky might come out to at least say hi, but then accepts that it’s not going to happen and heads to bed.

He’s been sleeping for a few hours when he hears what sounds like a sob coming from Bucky’s room. Blood going cold with the fear of another terrible episode, he opens the bedroom door expecting the worst -- but Bucky’s still sleeping. Steve whispers, “Hey, Buck, hey. You’re having a nightmare.” Puts a hand on his shoulder and Bucky surges up in the bed, clutching the comforter and heaving out another sob. 

“Hey. You okay? Bad dream, huh?” Steve doesn’t sit on the bed, he pulls up a chair instead, giving Bucky as much space as he can.

“Steve. You’re _here_.” The smile on his face, sad and sweet and relieved, reminds Steve of when he rescued Bucky in the Hydra factory so many years ago. As if he can’t believe his eyes, can’t trust what he sees, and Steve’s a figment of his imagination.

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be? What were you dreaming?”

“Just...” Bucky stretches his arm toward him, and Steve freezes, heart crashing in his chest. Bucky’s been so lost to him the past few days that Steve’s scared now, doesn’t want to push him over the edge he’s been teetering on. But he leans forward, taking Bucky’s hand, then gets yanked onto the bed, where Bucky wraps himself around Steve, tucking his face into Steve’s shoulder. “It’s been a rough day.”

“I know. You were great today, though.” Steve pulls back so he can see Bucky’s face. His eyes are wet, and Steve rolls onto his side, the two of them tangled together. “Do you want to talk about it, or should I just keep my yap shut?”

“Maybe later,” Bucky whispers. They simply hold on to each other for a long time, until Bucky says, “I’m so sorry about the past few days. About shutting you out. But I just couldn’t -- meeting Stark. It was-- Because I couldn’t remember if I killed Howard, and his mother. The only reason he’d want to help me is because of you and I just couldn’t--”

Oh. Steve had been so focused on the arm that he hadn’t considered anything so obvious. For the second time that day, his obliviousness about who Bucky really is punches him in the face. “I’m a pretty crap friend. I should have thought of that. Realized what was going on inside you.”

Bucky swats him on the shoulder. “Jackass. Don’t. You’re better than I deserve.”

“Do you really believe that, even after all this time? That you don’t deserve any of this?”

“I don’t know, Steve, I don’t know. It’s just...I keep hurting you. You do for me and do for me, and I just hurt you in return.”

“You don’t.” He wishes he could say the words, tell Bucky that he loves him and that’s the only thing that matters, but he knows that’s not the answer to this. Bucky shifts and reaches for the water glass, gulps it all down, then snakes his arms around Steve again. Steve says, “Everyone kept telling me that I was so sad all the time, living here in the future with them. I didn’t think I was, but they claimed to see it in me. Sam asked me, when I first met him, what made me happy, and I had absolutely no idea. But now I’m happy. No matter what you do, having you in the world makes me happy.”

“Stay here tonight with me? I don’t want to shut you out anymore. That was stupid.” Bucky runs the back of his fingers along Steve’s jaw. “Can I kiss you?”

“Trust me when I say that you will never, ever have to ask if you can kiss me. It’s an open invitation.” Bucky presses his mouth to Steve’s, sweetly at first, then more firmly, just closed lips, soft breath whispering across his cheek. For now it’s simply kisses and sighs, Bucky holding Steve’s hand against his chest. Steve kisses the palm of Bucky’s metal hand, says, “How is this one tonight? Better?” Bucky nods, his brow knitting, and Steve worries that he’s made him anxious again, but Bucky skates the cool fingers over his cheek.

“I went back to see Tony,” he says, and Steve draws back in surprise. “To talk about...things. He says nothing confirms that I could have killed them. He could be lying, but I don’t know, I just had to deal with it. Bruce would say closure.” Steve kisses the metal fingers. “And he invited me to come back and work on a new arm with him. I don’t need it, but he wants to do it and I could ask him -- I could ask if he could give me some way to feel this,” he says as he presses the fingertips to Steve’s lips.

His hands travel along Bucky’s neck, his shoulder. “I’m proud of you. For taking a chance, for going through with everything, despite how hard it is for you.” Bucky presses his lips together in a tight line, nods as Steve strokes him.

“I need some water.” Bucky goes to the bathroom and Steve rolls over on his back, breathing as deep as he can, trying to will himself calm. Wonders if this will ever get easier for either of them. He hooks his arm behind his head, staring up at the ceiling, reminding himself of all the times Bucky stood by him when things were dreadful. When Bucky comes back out, he’s drinking water, looking at Steve over the rim of the glass, but then he abruptly stops, slowly lowering the glass. His hand hovers in midair, his chest heaving, and he looks...confused, or stunned.

“What is it?” Steve asks, alarmed, sitting up.

“I just-- shit, Steve, I remember.” He laughs, sweet and rich and low. Bucky’s laugh before the war, before everything had darkened inside him. “I remember. You looked just like that. When we were, I don’t know, we were young and we lived in your apartment and do you remember? We would lie there sometimes in summer, on the floor, and we were just in our shorts and undershirts or just bare-ass naked, and it was stiflingly hot, but we’d close the curtains so no one could see even though it was like smothering and you would draw on my arm or my hand or my shoulder, tell me about your day and lie back just like that. I remember that, how just full up with love I was for you, I was stupid in love. And you always drew where I could cover up for work or with something I could wash off, and you’d tell me stories and draw and we would just lie there and I was so goddamn happy.”

Steve springs off the bed, stands in front of Bucky. “Yeah. I remember that, like it was yesterday. We would try so hard to be quiet so no one could hear because the windows were open but the curtains weren’t and we were always afraid someone would hear us giggling even over the radio.”

“Or moaning, Jesus Christ. You drove me wild sometimes.” He sets the glass down. “Stevie, I remember how it _felt_.” He grabs Steve’s waist, pulls him close. “Every other time I’ve remembered being happy or loving you, it was this...this intellectual thing. I knew it in my head, but I couldn’t feel it in here.” He taps his chest.

There’s a part of Steve that wants to hold back, because he’s afraid this isn’t real and it will vanish, but the light that glimmers in Bucky’s eyes, the flush of his cheeks and the ridiculous grin and the way his hands shake tell him it’s true. Steve kisses him, fingers in Bucky’s hair. 

Bucky’s mouth opens to his, tongue snaking through past lips and teeth slippery with spit, and Bucky’s delicious, he’s the best thing Steve’s ever tasted and Bucky’s humming against his mouth the way he used to back then, his own little melody, and the vibration drives Steve wild. He hooks his leg around the back of Bucky’s, dragging him up close, and Bucky’s tugging at his t-shirt, their arms tangling and bumping as they try to undress each other. Bucky’s grinning and humming and fumbling at Steve’s pajamas, and Steve nips at his lips, his chin, his throat while Bucky pulls Steve’s t-shirt up around his neck. It’s deliriously awkward and the best thing that’s ever happened in the history of the world.

Steve has Bucky’s pajama bottoms halfway down his ass, but he stops to let Bucky pull the t-shirt over his head, where it catches on his nose for a second, which makes Bucky bust out laughing. “I love your big, giant nose,” Bucky says and kisses it. 

“Hey!” Steve says, laughing into Bucky’s mouth, dives in for more deep, wet kisses while he yanks Bucky’s t-shirt off. Bucky inches them toward the bed, their feet tripping against each other’s. Steve stumbles against the chair, yelps “ow!” as he brings his foot up to rub his stubbed toe. 

“Ooo, poor baby,” Bucky says, still pushing, then Steve hits the edge of the bed and loses his balance for a second, and Bucky grins. Bucky’s mouth is so gorgeous, magenta and shiny and so lush that Steve wants to just spend the rest of eternity kissing it with a few breaks to draw it once in a while. But Bucky’s eyebrows are knitting together, so he stops. 

“Are you okay? Is this -- I don’t want you to do this if you aren’t ready.”

Bucky’s voice is low and throaty. “I’ve never been this ready in my life.” He pulls Steve’s pajama bottoms off as Steve falls back on the bed, almost kneeing Bucky in the chin, and Bucky squawks as he dodges the leg. Before Bucky can clamber onto the bed after him, Steve shoves all the pillows behind himself for the best view, admiring Bucky admiring him. 

“Jesus. Look at you. You’re so fuckin’ gorgeous,” Bucky says with awe. Starting at Steve’s collarbone, he rakes his fingers down his body, teasing around Steve’s cock, stopping when he finally gets to Steve’s ankles. Steve’s body is covered in goosebumps, his dick twitching. 

The sight of Bucky’s face takes Steve’s breath away, it’s the first time he’s seen the way Bucky used to look at him before, lust and devotion and adoration all mixed up together. At times he couldn’t believe that someone like Bucky would even notice him, so scrawny and puny, when he could have had his pick of anyone. Steve almost can’t breathe with the knowledge that Bucky is seeing him through the same eyes once more.

“Hey,” Steve says, his voice thick with want, and pushes Bucky back on the bed, getting his pajama bottoms off at last. “I want to make you feel good. I want this for you so much.” He kisses Bucky rough and deep, then trails more kisses along his neck, his chest, down to his groin, nuzzling at the bend of thigh and torso. Trails his fingers along the shaft of Bucky’s cock and down under his balls, which leads him to arch up like a bow and whimper.

 _That_. That is what he wants to see forever and ever, amen. Steve kisses and licks Bucky’s inner thighs, behind his knees, even his feet, and when Steve sucks his toes into his mouth Bucky gasps so loudly that Steve stops for a second, panicked that he’s done the wrong thing. But Bucky laughs, high-pitched, almost hysterical. “Jesus, Rogers, where the fuck did you pick that up?” and Steve laughs along with him, making his way as slowly as possible back up to Bucky’s neck, stopping to kiss and suck as much of his skin as he can. Nibbling at his throat, Steve wraps his hand around Bucky’s cock. He tenderly bites along the shell of Bucky’s ear, because he remembers how much he loved that, and dips his tongue inside, around, then makes his way back down Bucky’s neck with sucking kisses, reveling in the half-breathed moans and gasps, the way Bucky’s quivering underneath him. 

On one nipple, Steve presses the flat of his thumb to tease while he sucks the other, looking up to make sure this time it’s not too much for Bucky. His moan, the way his hand cups the back of Steve’s head, only encourages him this time. Finally Steve puts both his hands on Bucky’s face, strokes his hair back, and asks, “Did you enjoy that?”

Bucky scowls. “No. Not at all. I think you should try again -- start over. I can give you pointers if you think it’ll help.” Bucky lifts his head to kiss Steve, but Steve scoffs and pulls away. 

“Okay, well, thanks for playing,” Steve says and starts to climb off the bed, but Bucky grabs his shoulders and hauls him back down. Seeing him laugh like this, seeing him with that sideways grin again after so very long, is the most arousing thing he’s ever known. Steve grinds his hips into Bucky’s, delicious friction, and then bends down to Bucky’s groin, taking his cock in his mouth. The heavy rumble Bucky makes is so satisfying Steve’s stomach flips over and over, and he’d be laughing if he didn’t have a mouthful of cock. He reaches up to tease at Bucky’s nipple. The animal sounds grow louder as Bucky gets a death grip on his hair with his real hand and his metal hand twists the sheets.

All this attention has primed Bucky enough that Steve only has to move his hand and mouth up and down for a few minutes before Bucky explodes into his throat, his whole body nearly shooting off the bed as he rasps out, “Stevie, Jesus goddamn Christ.” Bucky shakes and shudders beneath him as Steve sucks him dry. When his trembling subsides, Bucky pulls Steve up to him, chuckling against his throat, but there are tears at the corners of his eyes and Steve fractures inside at the sight of that.

Steve kisses the sweat from his temples, his brows, kisses the wetness on his eyes, and stares down at Bucky. “When you call me that it gets me so worked up. I can’t believe I’m hearing you call me that again, after all these years, after being without you for so long. You’re here and you’re calling me Stevie. It just...does something to me.”

Bucky puts his lips to Steve’s ear and whispers “Stevie, Stevie, Stevie” in between kisses. Steve groans, so helpless against the sound of Bucky’s husky, dark voice wrapped around the name only he used. “I want you in me, Stevie. Now.”

“Are you sure?” Steve asks, even though he wants nothing more, he’s aching for it, a vibrating, live wire.

Bucky actually growls, says, “Now.”

Sitting up, Steve says, “There’s, um. Lube, but it’s in my bedroom. That’s, uh, what they call it these days, for. You know. It’s a lot better than, uh, what we had.” 

Bucky smiles, shy, a blush coming up on his neck and face, and it’s so preciously endearing. He’s never seen Bucky blush before. “I know. I’ve seen the Internet.”

“I’ll get it,” Steve says. He’s afraid that Bucky will change his mind if he leaves. 

As if Bucky can tell that’s what he’s thinking, he pushes Steve back on the bed, climbs off, and points at him. “I’m not going to change my mind, you idiot. Stay. I’ll get it. Don’t you move.”

“Wilco,” Steve says, grinning. “Right-hand night table.” He’s grateful, because he’s so hard he didn’t _want_ to get up, and now he gets to watch Bucky in motion, the way he moves his hips side to side in that loping strut, how his shoulder dips when he turns. When this is over he’s getting his sketchpad out and making Bucky pose for him. Bucky’s only gone a heartbeat, he comes back and tosses the bottle to Steve. 

“You filthy little saint, you,” Bucky says. “How many tubes of this stuff do you have?”

Steve can feel himself turn crimson, prompting Bucky to laugh. “And wow, the names for things these days. They don’t pull any punches, do they?” Steve grabs his arm and pulls him down on the bed, nuzzling Bucky’s neck as he drapes himself over him. He pushes a slicked-up finger inside as Bucky spreads his legs wider, watching his face. It’s more like Bucky’s thinking than feeling, as if he’s trying to assess whether this is good or bad, stop or go. Steve hesitates, then Bucky gives him a nod and he pushes another finger in, twists his hand and Bucky smiles, closes his eyes, and sighs. Bucky hooks a leg around Steve’s butt, slides his arms across his back, the metal cool and slippery against his sweaty skin.

“Stevie,” he says against Steve’s shoulder, “this is good. I feel so good.” Bucky’s getting hard again, and Steve takes his fingers out, pushes his cock inside Bucky. It’s marvelous, hot and tight and slick, Steve’s got Roman candles exploding behind his eyelids, he’s quaking and shivering like he’s a boy and this is his first time. He wraps his hand around Bucky’s dick as Bucky’s hips move in time with his own, faster and faster until everything’s whited out as he comes inside Bucky, short sharp thrusts that slow and slow till he can’t move anymore. 

When Steve can breathe, when he can see again, he kisses Bucky over and over. Watches Bucky’s face as he wrings him to orgasm, the way his mouth opens in a perfect circle, the way his eyes squeeze shut and he pants for breath. Steve kisses Bucky’s throat, taking in the thready pulse under his lips, licks the trail of sweat that runs along his jaw. Once he’s certain Bucky’s done in, he rolls over on his side, pulling Bucky to him. They stare at each other, smiling, sighing.

“Best fix for a nightmare ever,” Bucky says, and presses his forehead to Steve’s. “Though you get the wet spot.”

“Hilarious. I do have my own room, you know.” He kisses Bucky’s mouth, stroking his hand down Bucky’s back. “Are you ready to tell me what you were dreaming?” Steve asks, pushing his hair off his face. 

He’s silent a long time. “I was at your funeral, after Insight,” Bucky answers, in a voice that’s almost timid. “There were thousands of people. But I couldn’t get close because of -- because of who I was.”

“Jesus.” Steve lies back, pulls Bucky on top of him. He’s trailing his fingertips around Bucky’s shoulder, the meld of cruel metal and tortured flesh, a topographical map of his pain and suffering. Bucky shrugs as if the touch aggravates him, so Steve hesitates. 

“Don’t stop,” Bucky says, “it’s nice, actually. Your hands are so warm.” 

With a thick, choked voice, Steve says, “I hate that they did this to you.”

“Beats the alternative, I suppose,” Bucky says, as if it’s nothing. How can he be so accepting of the way they butchered him, how little they cared that he suffered?

“But you still have so much pain. They made you endure so much. That’s what I can’t stop thinking about.”

“It’s getting better.” He leans up on his elbows, petting the sides of Steve’s face. “It is what it is. You said the other night that none of us can go back, all we can do is carry on. I’ve been thinking of that a lot. Those months after Insight -- I hated myself, couldn’t stand to look at this thing they put together with spit and baling wire and that was falling apart in a shitty heap. I couldn’t see how it could have been human. But _you_. You changed everything.” He kisses Steve’s forehead. “This, tonight, was so good. I want to do this _a lot_. Feel this way as often as I can, as much as this rat trap in my head will let me. So we just gotta accept that some things are in the past and we have to figure out how to live in the future.”

Steve thinks of all the times someone told him how sad he was about living in the future, and smiles. “I’m so glad you’re remembering things, and these emotions are coming back. But you know what? This was all you. Not me. Even if this is it, if you never get another memory back or this is as far as you can go, it’s good enough. The person you’ve become...I love him every bit as much as I loved the person you were.”

“That’s good, Rogers, ’cause I think you’re kind of stuck with me.”

 

****

The barn they were spending the night in wasn’t exactly what Bucky would call warm, but at least it was dry, which after days of sleeting rain and ice-rimed mud was good enough. Bucky climbed up into the loft in the fading purple twilight, kicking around the old straw to flush out any rats, shaking out his rain jacket. 

He waited for Steve and the rest of the fellas to join him up where it was drier, but only Steve climbed the ladder. Bucky raised an eyebrow at him, and Steve shrugged. Fine by him, then, if they had a little privacy for the first time in days. His eyes adjusted as darkness came on, and he sat down in the middle of the loft, utterly exhausted, itching in his still-damp clothes. Steve sat down behind him, back to back -- they’d slept this way many times, holding each other up like bookends, too tired to even lie down and try to get comfortable. Steve’s soft breath, his solid warmth, the sturdiness of him comforted Bucky when he was too jangled up to let go. 

He reached behind him to take Steve’s hand, just to touch him for the first time in a few days. “Hang on,” Steve said, and took his gloves off, then grabbed Bucky’s hand. “Couple more days and we’ll be home free.”

“Mm-hm,” Bucky agreed, closing his eyes. When it grew dark like this, just the pattering of rain on the roof and the muted noise of the squad moving about below, he could forget how miserable he was for a few minutes. Bucky was vaguely aware of Steve opening his canteen with one hand, tearing off some bread from a loaf the farmer had given them. Then he must have fallen asleep, because the next thing Bucky knew he was wide awake with a full bladder and Steve was softly sleeping, still back to back with him. It was pitch black. Bucky shifted and folded Steve gently to the floor, listening for the boys, but it sounded as if they too had gone to sleep, except for Dernier, whom he could just barely make out standing below on watch. 

He went to the corner to piss, peering out between the slats of the tiny, boarded-up window. Something glinted in the dark, he was sure of it, but after the first couple flashes it disappeared. Buttoning his trousers, he watched for a while longer, waiting until he caught it again. There were people out there, and he was pretty sure he saw the outline of a half-track and a truck. 

“Steve,” Bucky said quietly, shaking his shoulder, “Steve, wake up. We got company.”

Steve’s eyes snapped open and he was alert in a heartbeat. “What is it?”

“About a hundred yards out, just off the main road. I don’t know if it’s Hydra, it could be just plain old Wehrmacht.”

“Good thing we took the dike road in. How many?”

“Impossible to tell. There’s no light out tonight. Could be a platoon, could be a company. But I think...I can’t be sure but I thought I saw the outline of a half-track, maybe a truck, so might just be transport. What do you want to do?”

Steve stretched, picked up his shield. “Well, I’d really like to go home, have an egg cream, and oh! a slice of cherry pie, but you know--”

“Jackass.” Bucky grinned at him.

Steve thought for a while. Usually Steve would go full steam ahead, take on all comers because he was such a fearless, stupid bastard. But lately he’d been pulling back. They’d had a lot of close scrapes; nearly every one of the squad had taken some kind of serious injury, including Bucky getting grazed by a bullet on the shoulder. “Let’s see if we get movement. You got your scope?” Bucky waved it at him. They went to the small window, gently loosened one of the boards to make a V shape, and Bucky pulled the scope up, sweeping it across the area where he’d seen the light. 

“And here I thought we were gonna have a nice quiet night.” He wondered what Steve could see from this distance. Bucky’d never been able to tell Steve that since Zola had experimented on him, he could see better, even in darkness. “Wish we had at least a little moon, or some starlight. But then I suppose they could see us.”

“No rest for the wicked,” Bucky said, hushed. After a while, he commented, “Hey, I never asked you, you meet any big stars when you were on tour with the USO? Never got to see any of the camp shows, myself. I do like the dances though. You know me.” He still loved to dance when they were back in England, though they never seemed to be there long enough.

“Yeah, I met a few,” Steve said quietly. “Bob Hope, of course, he was great to me when I didn’t feel like I knew what I was doing. I met Judy Garland, and Ginger Rogers -- she teased me about maybe being related.”

“Wow. I’ll be damned. Hey, what about Clara Bow? God, remember her? When we wanted to see that picture, what was it, _Call Her Savage_?” Bucky said in his most dramatic, if hushed, voice. “‘Alluring to men who feared her...’ And my pop was so dead-set against it because it was too grown-up for us.”

“That was just because he wanted to see it alone since he had the hots for her. Didn’t want a couple of lustful teenage boys watching him drool. And no, I never met her, I think she retired from movies not long after that one.”

“That’s too bad. Didn’t we sneak in, anyway?”

“Yeah, I think so. Yeah, and your father gave me holy hell when he found out, because we got ratted out by one of the Delaney brothers, the mooks. Your pop never liked me.” 

“Nah, my folks loved you. It was just...”

“I was the one who always got you in trouble.”

“Maybe.”

He didn’t know how to explain it to Steve. It wasn’t that Bucky thought Steve had been lucky not to have had a father around, he didn’t believe that at all. But at least Steve had never taken the lickings Bucky had over the years, never had to deal with the expectations of fathers for their sons. And Steve _did_ get him into trouble; nine times out of ten, Stevie was the instigator of whatever Bucky got his hide tanned for.

It was Bucky’s father who’d flat-out said that Bucky could have done better in choosing a friend. Bucky’d thought it was because his grades had declined -- not by much, but just enough -- once he’d met Steve, not to mention he’d been sent to the principal’s office a few times. But then it got worse as they got older, his father almost hostile to Steve at times. Eventually he put the kibosh on Steve staying overnight in Bucky’s room, or Bucky spending the night at Steve’s. He’d always made it sound like it was just how things were once you got older -- Bucky had a job and responsibilities, Steve had school, too. 

Bucky had remained ignorant of the real reason until the first time a schoolmate called Steve a queer, and then the penny dropped and he realized that his father had seen something in him -- something Bucky was only beginning to understand about himself. Bullies picked on Steve because he was so small and frail, because he was an artist, never had a date. He’d despised that they seized on the very things Bucky loved most about Steve -- his artistic nature, his sweetness -- and twisted it, tried to sully it and it hadn’t even been true. No one made those assumptions about Bucky, never imagined he was the one pining for his best friend and dreaming about what it would be like to touch his skin or kiss his lips. When it finally happened, though, when the thing his father had seen in him was true, he’d protected it, because he didn’t give a good goddamn what happened to himself but he would never compromise Steve.

But Bucky had seen the photos, oh, he’d _seen the newsreels_ and there he was, always by Steve’s side or right behind him, his face full of the adoration he carried like a scar. He’d read the magazine and newspaper articles about Captain America and his right-hand man Sergeant James Barnes and their astounding Howling Commandos, he’d seen the comic books and the toys and read the mash notes that arrived by the sackload to their quarters when they were standing down. He’d been swarmed at the dances by girls who were dying to meet the version of him they thought they knew. All of it was such a terrible joke because a blind man could see how much he loved Steve. 

No one would call Steve a queer now, all heroic six foot two of him and Peggy’s picture in his compass and the hearts that shot out of his eyes every time he saw her. Bucky alone knew that Steve had looked at him with hearts in his eyes too, and wasn’t that just the damn shame of it all. His father had seen through them back then, back when there really hadn’t been anything _to_ see, and it was just so bleakly _funny_ that Bucky and Steve were now soldiering around Europe together, famously courageous and strong and virtuous, when Bucky was really just the kind of fella to have moved into Steve’s apartment after his ma died partly out of friendship but mostly so he could stick it to his father and say _you think we’re not normal, well, how you like us now?_

Yet it never really changed. It had been tenuous for Steve and him here -- a squad that the brass didn’t support despite their fame, the difference in their ranks that should have kept them further apart. The fellas knowing about their relationship. They walked a tightrope all the time. Once the war was over, Steve’s life would have to take a different direction. He didn’t belong to Bucky anymore, he probably wouldn’t even truly belong to Peggy, not unless he gave up Captain America and put down that shield. 

When he’d first met Agent Peggy Carter, Bucky had worried that she would end up breaking Steve’s heart, the way every other girl he’d cared for had hurt him. But Peggy saw the real Steve, she’d fallen for him back before the serum, she saw him with the same bright eyes as Bucky had. Bucky felt both a kinship with her and a bitter envy -- because she might have a life with Steve he never could when it was over, she would win in a game that Bucky knew was rigged against him. 

Before they’d taken off on this operation, he’d found Peggy outside Stark’s lab reassembling a rifle prototype, as if she’d been waiting just for him. She’d invited him to sit with her, pretending she wanted his advice about which of Stark’s new weapons to take into the field, and they’d chatted about that before she’d said, in a distant tone, not looking at his face, “I imagine that once this is all over, I should be able to ask your advice on many things.”

“Agent?” he’d asked, confused.

“That you’ll be as indispensable to myself and Captain Rogers in future as you are now.”

Not wanting to look too obtuse, he’d just nodded at her and lifted an eyebrow, drinking his terrible tea and trying to puzzle out what she was saying. As they’d headed out for Holland he’d finally twigged to her meaning, the same way he’d understood what his pop had been saying all those years ago.

Bucky looked over at Steve, who was still watching out the window. “Peggy knows about us,” Bucky said as flatly as he could, and Steve went rigid for a second.

“You don’t say.” Bucky couldn’t tell if he was being droll or actually hadn’t guessed that.

“She made a comment that she figures I’m pretty much going to be around for the rest of your natural life. I couldn’t tell if she was happy about that or disgusted.”

“Do you think you will be? Around,” Steve asked, and the note of hope in his voice left Bucky aching like he had a sucking chest wound. 

Bucky shrugged. Tears were prickling at the back of his eyes, his throat was closing off around a lump so big he thought he would gag. “Who can tell? Sometimes I feel like this is never going to end, and we’re not getting out of this fucking hellhole alive. And then other times, I think maybe yeah, especially with you doing what you’re doing. I can find a girl I like and settle down, I can always find a girl. But I don’t know how much of me’s gonna be left after this for anyone. What kind of future I’d even want, outside of knowing you have to be in it. This thing has...contaminated me.”

Steve’s attention had long since moved from the window to Bucky’s face, though Bucky was staring straight ahead, not able to really look at Steve anymore. “You’re not contaminated,” he said in a broken voice. “You’re battle fatigued. You’ve been suffering since you got out of that lab and I can’t do anything to make it better.” Steve touched his shoulder. “You’re afraid that no one can ever understand what it’s like, aren’t you? That we can’t go back.”

“But the way forward looks really goddamn lousy, Stevie.” He wiped at his eyes. “Though if Peggy and you are willing to put up with me, I suppose that’s something to hold on to.”

“To be honest, I think she’s always known, ever since I got you back. And I think she understands.”

“Well, I’m glad she does, because I sure as hell don-- Shit. Four o’clock. Two men. Reconnaissance.” Bucky snapped back into soldier mode.

“It’ll be dawn soon. Don’t worry about these guys. We can wait, take ’em all out.”

“No. Do it now. We have the advantage. You get the fellas, head out the way we came in. Rendezvous back at the last milepost marker, radio in. I’ll get rid of these guys.”

Steve looked almost panicked. “Bucky, no. Not alone, not now. That’s an order.” 

Bucky nearly burst out laughing. “Are you actually attempting to pull rank on me, Cap? _This is what I do_ , Steve, you know that. By the time they’re overdue, I’ll be long gone.”

Steve stared at him with those forlorn blue eyes that burned into him even in the dark. Bucky finally understood -- Steve was terrified of losing him, the possibility of it looming larger and larger every time they came out, with every injury sustained. “Don’t take any chances,” he said in a strangled voice. “That _is_ an order.”

“Ah, I’ll have ’em on the ropes in no time.” It was bad luck to make promises you weren’t certain you could keep, but he added, “I’m not gonna leave you out here alone.” He climbed down the ladder after Steve, waited till they were all safely away, and went off to kill some people whose faces he probably wouldn’t even see, because that was what he did and he had always been good with his hands.

 

****

Sam rolls over in bed, desperately searching for his phone on the nightstand, which is ringing way too loudly. He stretches across Natasha’s sleeping form and finds it on the other side. Her hair gets caught in the whiskers under his nose and he puffs out a breath to dislodge it. 

When he sees that it’s Barnes, he answers, “Hey, man, what’s up?”

“Do you have time?” Barnes asks the most oblique questions. 

“Do you mean now, or later?”

While he’s hesitating, Nat rolls over and raises her eyebrows, mouthing the word “Barnes?” He nods. She closes her eyes and tucks her head up under his chin.

Bucky finally says, “Later,” as if he’s only just now realizing that it’s better to make appointments with people. It would make Sam laugh if it wasn’t the freaking Winter Soldier he was talking to.

They arrange to meet in the same coffee place, and Sam hangs up. Nat’s watching him and smiling, she looks like an orange tabby kitten curled up on her side, warm and happy. “What?” he says, and twirls a section of her hair around his finger.

“You’re sweet,” is all she says, and he’s not sure if she’s mocking him or that’s actually a compliment. Her opacity is kind of thrilling, kind of terrifying, and holy shit does he like it. She gets up, stretches, and heads for the shower, beckoning him to follow with a glance over her incredibly sexy pale cream shoulder. He likes doing what she tells him to.

When Sam gets to the coffeehouse, Barnes is waiting there outside, and there’s something about him that seems different to Sam, though he can’t figure it out. While they get their drinks, he watches the way Barnes moves, and realizes that his arm isn’t dragging him down on the left the way it usually does these days.

“Looks like your arm’s okay,” Sam says, and Bucky blinks a couple times. “Stark do his thing?”

“Oh. Yeah, they took the tracker out and there was something else in there that drugged me.” He says it so blandly that it makes Sam wince, like someone talking about a sandwich they didn’t like. It disturbs him sometimes, how utterly inured to pain Barnes has been. “He’s building me a new one. I guess.”

“Do you want that?”

Bucky shrugs. “Whatever they want to do.”

“That’s not an answer,” Sam says gently. “You don’t have to accept the status quo just because that’s what those bastards did to you, but you also don’t have to change it if you’d rather not. You have a right to want what _you_ want, or refuse what you don’t.” Bucky looks away, fingers drumming on the tabletop.

“Steve and I had sex the past couple nights.” 

Sam sprays coffee out of his mouth, and a couple patrons turn to stare at him. “Jesus, Barnes, you’re something else. You do love to blurt things out.” He mops at his chin with a napkin. “Filters, man. Look into it.”

“I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have said. I know you were...”

Sam tries to shake it off. Someday, he’s gonna write a book about this. No one will believe any of it, but he’s gonna write a goddamn book. “Look, if it makes you feel any better, when you called me this morning, you woke up Natasha.”

Bucky’s eyes go round. Whatever else you could say about him, the dude had gorgeous eyes, blue in a different way than Steve’s.

“So. You guys are finally knocking boots again. Things good?”

“Yes.” Sam likes the way there’s no middle ground with Barnes most of the time. It’s kind of refreshing. “But everything’s different now. I need to -- I want to be better for him. And Bruce talks about therapy a lot.” He shakes his head. “But here’s the thing.” Sam waits, but Bucky doesn’t say what the thing is, just frowns, twists his mouth around, drums that -- actually pretty annoying -- staccato beat on the table.

“You can’t trust anyone?” Sam’s thought about this before, how hard it would be for Bucky to talk to anyone about this other than Steve. He’s all too aware of the generational issues that came into play when he was first trying to get Steve to discuss his problems. It would be so much worse for Barnes, like opening an artery and just waiting to bleed out.

“That’s part of it.” He downs most of his coffee in one big drink. “I can’t do that. I’m not that -- I can’t do that sort of thing, and even if I could, we’d never know, no matter how much we vetted someone. But I want to -- to fit in this world more. And I thought I could talk to you, if something’s bad or I get confused. I like to talk to you.”

Sam’s kind of touched and kind of freaked out at the same time. There’s still just that much residual fear that if he said or did the wrong thing, that metal arm would crush his skull in a half-second. 

As if sensing this, Barnes touches Sam’s arm. He stares down at Bucky’s hand. “I wouldn’t. Hurt you again. I -- you’re a friend.”

Sam’s blown away by how far Barnes has come. Not too long ago, he’d thought this might end up being the worst thing possible for Steve, that it was dangerous to hope that Bucky would get better. Maybe even doubted Steve’s sanity for believing in Bucky. But here he is, talking about friends, talking about love. 

“Okay. Yeah, man. You feel like talking, we can talk, you don’t, we can just shoot hoops or something. Do needlepoint or braid your hair. Keep it casual, have coffee. A couple times a week to start with, okay?”

Barnes nods. “Thank you, Sam,” he says, using his name for the first time. Bucky’s whole body seems to melt into the chair then, as if he’s just had about a thousand pounds lifted off of him and a few metal rods removed. He becomes relaxed in Sam’s presence for the first time since they brought him home from the hospital, and he grins, his eyes alight. 

Sam’s gonna write a _goddamn book_.

 

To his great surprise, Bucky discovers he loves gardening. At first he just told himself that he was keeping his hands busy, since he already spent so much time in the roof garden anyway. With spring he worked more and more, opening the shed up and pulling out the tools, until he finally just admitted he was gardening. It took him a while to realize that Pepper had, at some point, cancelled the regular gardeners’ maintenance.

There’s something incredibly peaceful about it; he doesn’t think of the things he’s done or that have been done to him when he’s pulling weeds or pruning a shrub, because that’s all he’s thinking about. No faces of the people he’s murdered haunt his vision. 

His enhanced strength and the metal arm are helpful -- he can lift whole trees that took small teams of guys before, he can dig fingers into hard wet soil as easy as sifting through flour. The changes to his body are helpful here, not simply the legacy of the sinister.

He reads everything he can about plants, learns about zones and drought tolerance and groupings and more about weeds and pests than anyone should want to know. The names of flowers bring back memories from childhood: love-in-a-mist, bachelor buttons, forget-me-nots. He thinks of his mother or Mrs. Rogers, of small pots on fire escapes and pretty little window boxes being watered on steamy summer days.

Though he appreciates the solitude, Bucky enjoys the visits as well. Steve is good about taking an interest or leaving him to it as Bucky needs. A few times Sam or Stark have silently alighted beside him, out playing with their toys, and there’s something sort of fun about having friends who can fly.

His favorite visitor is Pepper Potts. She brings him teas to try, never really says more than “this one’s a really rare blend” or something like that, watches whatever he’s doing in quiet contemplation. She’ll sit on a bench, her bare feet tucked delicately up under her, sipping tea or occasionally asking him about a plant, but he never feels like she’s watching him, waiting to find a crack she can burrow into and pull something out of him. She’s shared what happened to her with him, but never made it sound like she was telling him she knew what he’d been through. 

One day he’d asked her why she was never afraid of him. She’d smiled distantly, lost in thought, and said, “Did you know that Tony picked me himself to be his assistant? He could have chosen anyone. I’ve never asked him why, because I didn’t want to know. I like that mystery, in some ways. And he was always the hottest of messes, still is. It taught me, though, that what’s on the outside is so rarely the real person underneath. The faces we show the world aren’t the faces that look back at us from the mirror.” She never said more about it, and Bucky likes that she probably never will.

It’s Pepper who brings up the idea of getting involved in the community gardens in New York, which at first he’s reluctant to do but then decides why not. Steve’s been trying to get him go to charity events, but Bucky doesn’t feel like he can deal with that public a face; with the gardens, though, he can offer actual work to help, plus there are often kids around and he gets a kick out of their reactions to him. He tries not to be too blatant about his strength or his arm, but once it’s explained that he’s a vet and has an experimental prosthesis, people are usually pretty accepting. 

His days aren’t exactly regimented, but he has something resembling a schedule now -- mornings are almost always spent with Banner doing meditation and yoga or tai chi; every few weeks, Barton takes him to the private outdoor range; he and Steve train and spar nearly every day, and sometimes he trains with Romanov as well. He meets with Sam two days a week to hang out. When he has time and can handle the constant stream of patter, he goes to Stark’s lab. They’re still fine-tuning his new arm; Bucky’s in no hurry for it -- truth to tell, it scares him a little -- but it’s Tony’s favorite project by far.

It’s only been a few months and change, and he still doesn’t see that shore. There are good days and bad days, almost evenly matched but lately leaning toward slightly more good. Nights are often the worst, and as much as it helps being with Steve, he knows he can’t put all his hopes onto Steve’s strong shoulders -- Steve still has his own problems, lots of them. But the noise in his head is quieter lately, sometimes even gone completely; his physical condition is vastly improved; and he’s hopelessly, ridiculously in love with Steve Rogers, and that counts for a lot. 

Most of all, though, he’s learned that when he’s having a bad day, he can turn to someone, and he doesn’t even have to say anything at all, they will just help if he lets them. More than a few times, he’s only had to put his forehead on Steve’s shoulder to have Steve turn around and envelop him in his arms, and then the darkness gets a little brighter. He’s learned he’s not alone anymore, and that he always has a choice. He’s part of a team again -- with Steve, with all of them. 

One day Steve had come in and tossed a package on Bucky’s lap, said, “Suit up.” Bucky had opened it to find a perfect replica of the tac gear he’d lost with Thor’s lightning strike. “Got another one of your splinters, and as you so eloquently reminded me last time, I need you to watch my back because I’m a suicidal maniac. So get ready.”

“Who’s on the team?” And would they be all right with someone like him along for the ride? 

“Natasha, Clint, Sam, and possibly Stark, if he gets back from Japan in time.” He’d grinned at Bucky. “And they’re glad you’re coming with. Really. You know I wouldn’t lie about that.”

He’d let Steve help him into his gear, pulled his weapons together, and briefed with the team, just like in the old days. No longer a faceless operative with mercenaries he didn’t know and couldn’t trust. On Steve’s right hand, on a squad, on a mission with purpose. 

It had gone as smoothly as something like that could go -- basic search and destroy, nothing too complex. They hadn’t accumulated much in the way of intel and no useful personnel to interrogate, but they destroyed a command center, and Bucky had the chance to put himself back into the fight alongside Steve, watching over him.

On the flight back, Steve had wanted to debrief, just the two of them. Barton and Romanov were in the cockpit of the plane, and Sam had been asleep on the jumpseat behind them while they went over the op in detail, so much like old times, just a CO and his noncom. In the dark stillness, coming down from the adrenaline, though, it had been easy to keep talking, to tell Steve things he hadn’t said before. Not about the mission but about the early days of his captivity, about not being able to shake the feeling that he’d never fought hard enough against them and that if he hadn’t been rotten inside, they could never have turned him into such a weapon. About the way Steve still tried to shoulder that blame.

Steve had pressed the backs of his fingers to Bucky’s cold cheek, still so crushed and broken over his loss, still watching him fall even seventy years later. Bucky saw that in him from time to time, knew it ate at his soul even now.

“You can’t feel guilty about that, not anymore,” Bucky had said. “You don’t bear the responsibility of what they turned me into.” He truly did believe that, wanted more than anything for Steve to believe it as well. 

“Did you ever stop to think, though, that it’s not just guilt because I let you go? That it was because who you were to me laid the groundwork? You finished fights for me when we were young, you defended me, killed people for me in the war. Maybe you wouldn’t have been their perfect assassin if it hadn’t been for me, the terrible decisions I made.”

Bucky’s anguish and rage had been almost incandescent inside him. He’d clutched Steve’s arms, shaking him. “Never, ever say that to me again,” he’d told Steve. “Everything I ever did for you was my choice. Because I loved you, because you were my friend.” 

Bucky had wondered then if that scar between them would ever disappear entirely. Steve said, “This was good, working side by side again. It felt right.” He’d kissed Bucky, trying to calm him down. “I will never, ever let anything happen to you again. Just like you always took care of me.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” He’d put his hands on Steve’s face. “We owe each other that much. I won’t fall again and I’m not going anywhere if I can help it, but we don’t have control over the future.”

Steve had nodded like he understood, but Bucky knew he had made that promise inside his mind, because he was a mule and an idiot and he needed to bear those crosses.

Sam had raised himself up on his elbow, squinting at them. “You two are such dumbasses about each other.” He’d lain back down and put his hands over his eyes. “Shut up and go to sleep.” 

 

“Hey, man,” Sam says, “you missed our appointment.” Bucky opens his eyes, sees Sam and Natasha looking down at him with soft smiles, and realizes he’s fallen asleep on the grass. It had been a bad morning, so he’d blown off most of his schedule to work in the garden. Steve had been off early for meetings with his charities and some personal appearances, leaving Bucky alone and anxious, an exposed nerve.

It had been exactly one year since Steve had cut through his conditioning and given him a name, a year since he’d nearly killed Steve, and that had been messing with his head since he’d realized it the night before. “Bad day,” he says, shading his eyes and looking up at them. Sam sits down next to him on the grass, rests his arms on his knees.

“You want to talk about it?” he asks, and then Natasha sits down on the other side of Bucky, not as if they’re double-teaming him, just sitting by his shoulder and gazing out at the sky. Bucky scrubs at his face, his mouth dry like it’s stuffed with cotton wool and his eyes scratchy. 

“Today is a year.” 

Natasha glances over at Sam, and Sam takes a deep breath. “Huh. Wow. I didn’t even realize.” Sam leans back onto his elbows, crossing his legs at the ankles and bouncing his foot. “Nice day today, I can see why you’d fall asleep up here. It’s so quiet.”

Natasha stretches out and lies down next to him, crossing her arms over her chest. “You’re thinking about the negatives of that day, rather than the positives.”

Bucky scoffs. “There really weren’t any positives. It’s only...just little accidents of fate that Steve’s still alive. Just accidents. And you.” He turns his head toward Sam.

“Nah, man.” Sam lies down, puts his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “It’s really amazing to me how easy it is for you to forget the good choice you made that day.”

It almost makes Bucky laugh. “Is this your tough love again?”

“I can’t slap you upside the head because you’d probably kill me, but someone’s gotta point out the positive stuff.” He squeezes Bucky’s shoulder, above the metal. 

“I know I’m being ridiculous.” Steve loves him, Steve has never held that against him. But Bucky can still see it, still feel it -- hitting him and hitting him, the shots that tore through his body. Tearing off Sam’s wings.

“You’re not,” Natasha says. She turns on her side, putting her hand to his waist. It would be comical except that it feels...good to have them here with him. Safe. “Do you remember what I said to you in L.A.?”

“Every word,” Bucky says. 

“Then you remember I said there were people who believed we were deserving of forgiveness. You’re with them every day. The only one who can’t forgive you is yourself.”

He squeezes her hand. Of course she’s right. But knowing someone’s right doesn’t mean you can do anything about it. They lie there, quiet and peaceful and protected, and then Bucky feels a shadow across his face and opens his eyes to see Steve, standing there with a confused but happy smile. He’s changed out of his uniform, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and he looks so handsome, so strong.

“Wow. JARVIS told me you were all up here, but I wasn’t expecting this.”

“Having a bad day,” Bucky says. “It’s better now.” 

“I’ll bet it is. I’m sorry. I should have checked in with you today before I left. It’s because of the date, isn’t it?” Bucky nods. “Yeah. I’ve had requests for interviews all week. Said no to every one, though.” He kneels down above Bucky’s head, brushes his hand over his hair. “What the hell, I guess if everyone else is doing it...” He lies down above them, almost like the top of a T, his hand moving through Bucky’s hair.

Everyone’s quiet for a while, until Steve says, “I know some days it feels like it’s not enough, but don’t forget that you are loved.” Bucky reaches up to grasp Steve’s hand. “You’ve come so far, and there are better days ahead.” It’s a good thing none of them expect him to speak, because right now he doesn’t think he can. Was he ever this safe? He presses Steve’s wrist to his mouth, feels the steady pulse under his lips, Steve’s strength passing through his skin. 

Of course it can’t last. There’s a strangled sound coming from his nine o’clock, and he opens his eyes to see Tony Stark standing there, his hands out. “How is there an orgy on my rooftop and I’m not invited? You might remember it’s my building.”

Natasha moans, curls into a tighter ball against Bucky’s side.

Sam says, his voice a gentle warning, “Bucky’s had a rough day. We’re just hanging out till he feels better.”

Huffing, Tony says, “What about _my_ day? No one’s throwing me a superhero sex orgy because I had a bad one.”

Steve shifts onto his back, palm on Bucky’s neck, and laughs. “Did you actually have a bad day? No?” Steve adds, when Tony shakes his head. “Then for once in your life, keep your trap shut. Sit down and join us,” he snaps, but it’s fond, amused.

“Oh, okay,” Tony says with excitement, as if all he really wanted was the invitation. Bucky smiles. You could pick worse friends. Of course Tony chooses to lie down next to Natasha, gingerly spooning behind her, but she tolerates it, and he puts his hand on Bucky’s forearm. Not long ago he couldn’t bear to be touched, and now everyone has their hands on him.

“This is good,” Tony says after a while. “Kind of warm and fuzzy. I can feel my heart growing two sizes. Among other things.”

“Tony,” Sam and Steve and Natasha all groan as one.

“Has anyone texted Banner? He should be here. Pepper’s out of town or I’d say we should invite her, too. Where’s Barton?”

“For Pete’s sake, Tony,” Steve sighs. 

Stark’s quiet for a while. “I’m still serious about that vibrating hand, though. Day like today, think of the possibilities.” Steve reaches down and puts his hand over Tony’s mouth.

 

****

Though the window was open, Steve was smothering in his bed, sweat beading on every inch of skin. It hadn’t been that hot for June when he and Bucky went to the Expo, but now it was like the temperature had risen a dozen degrees. He was just wound up, he knew that, alight inside with the brilliant possibilities of a future discovered only a few hours before. 

Now he was 1A. He would get the chance to prove himself. Dr. Erskine hadn’t told him all the details, but in a way, Steve didn’t want to know, just in case he lost his nerve and backed down at the very moment all he’d wanted the past few years was finally within his grasp. 

There was a soft tapping sound on the windowsill and he got up, pulled the curtain back to find Bucky’s grinning face. “What are you doing?” he whispered. “I thought you had to get to Camp Kilmer before you go to the port.”

“I do. Couldn’t leave it where it was, though. I just couldn’t stand the thought of shipping out without saying a proper goodbye.”

Steve yearned to tell Bucky what had happened after he’d walked away with the girls. But Bucky wouldn’t understand, he’d be angry or scared and Steve couldn’t send him off like that, thinking the worst about him, not knowing if they would see each other again. _When_ they would see each other again. When.

“Get in here,” Steve said.

“No, I gotta go,” Bucky said, pointing at his duffel. “We gotta get back for staging. I’m meeting the fellas.”

Steve threw his trousers and shirt on over his pajamas and put his shoes on, then clambered out the window, where Bucky helped him down. “I know, I know, I’m not supposed to know anything about this, but I’ll go with you as far as I can.” Bucky dusted him off, ruffled his hair. God, he was going to miss that. His throat was raw, trying to swallow broken glass.

“Buck...” Steve began, but then stopped, crystalline words evaporating like breath in winter. Bucky’s head was cocked to the side, eyes adoring as he looked down at Steve, the very way that made Steve’s insides spiral and warp till his heart faltered.

“Let’s not talk about that now, all right? I don’t want to rehash this conversation again. I just want to have a few last moments with you.” He took the duffel and they started walking.

Instead of staying with Steve or his family, Bucky had opted to stay in a cheap hotel with a few of his unit friends. Steve had felt slighted by that, but had come to understand that Bucky was trying to ease himself away so the leaving was less sorrowful. 

But he _had_ to tell Bucky what happened. Didn’t Steve owe him that much? “I wanted to say, though--”

“Stop.” Bucky wheeled on him, cast a glance down the street, and then grabbed Steve by the front of his shirt to pull him into an alley. “Listen. I don’t want to talk about that. I just want you to know...”

“What?” Steve asked, and closed his hands around Bucky’s. Bucky seemed almost frightened, such an unfamiliar face.

Bucky then kissed him with so much longing Steve was dizzy, his stomach catapulted into his throat. “I’ll write you every day,” Bucky said, and covered his face with kisses. “I won’t stop thinking about you.” Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky’s waist and buried his face against his shoulder. This was the last time he’d get to touch Bucky until...who knew when. Bucky was already fading away from him, his sun sinking below the horizon. 

“I’ll write you back. I won’t have many interesting things to say, but I’ll write as often as I can.” Yet he had no idea what his life would be like once he was processed and went into basic training. Once he became what Dr. Erskine had hinted at. 

“Send me some pictures. All I have is that stupid photo booth picture of the two of us. Self portraits, maybe? So I can remember your face. Your big nose and those long lashes and that gorgeous mouth you’re always sassing everyone with.” He leaned forward and kissed Steve’s nose. “Just be...be safe. It will be a lot easier for me to know you’re safe.” 

God, how was he supposed to keep this from Bucky? How could he pretend they were simply saying goodbye and Steve wasn’t holding on to a secret that would change their lives forever? He would explode out of his skin, this knowledge bursting forth like an animal from a cage. 

Bucky squeezed his eyes closed, trying not to cry. How he’d always hated to be vulnerable, Steve thought, to not be the one standing strong and resolute, holding Steve up. “Don’t come with me, Stevie. It’s just gonna be too hard to say goodbye there, with people around.”

“Okay, Buck. Okay.” He wouldn’t leave Bucky alone in Europe, he would do whatever it took to find his way to the 107th and be by Bucky’s side. 

“I gotta go.” He kissed Steve again, and then picked up his duffel. Steve had never lied to Bucky, ever. Hell, he’d never even been good at hiding something from him, except the time he was madly in love with Evelyn Doherty in seventh grade and was afraid if he said anything, Bucky would flirt with her, or when he’d hid his sketches of Bucky. 

Keeping this from him wasn’t a lie, was it? A sin of omission, maybe. Steve’s shoulders slumped as he watched Bucky walk away from him for the second time in less than eight hours, a book closing before he’d finished reading it. There was no promise in the 1A stamp now, it was only a tarnished secret, cowardly hidden from the person he loved most.

“Buck,” Steve called out, and Bucky turned to him, grinning, as if nothing had just happened. As if their world wasn’t spinning away, two kids from Brooklyn who were being cast out into the darkness of war and loss, never to return. The fear Steve thought he’d seen in Bucky’s eyes was completely gone, replaced by a false light. “I’ll see you when I see you.” Bucky nodded at him and went around the corner, out of sight.

 

***

“And I was thinking that while we’re there we could see Peggy.” Bucky stops in midturn, too stunned to finish his spin away from Steve, but unfortunately, Steve can’t see that he’s stopped. The cartwheeling kick lands Steve’s left foot right on the bridge of Bucky’s nose.

He yowls in pain and drops to the floor of the ring, hands in front of his nose, swearing a blue streak. “What the fuck, Steve?” Dazzling white fireflies circle around and around in front of his eyes.

“Oh my God! Why did you stop?” He kneels down in front of Bucky, trying to peel his hands away. There’s blood all over them. “Oh geez, did I break it?” 

“Yeah, you fuckin’ broke it, what does it look like?” 

“I wasn’t expecting you to stop!” He grabs a towel from the corner and presses it gently to Bucky’s face, wipes some of the blood away. 

“Maybe you should save your artillery shells for _after_ training,” Bucky snarls. Steve has been dropping bombs on him since the moment they walked into the gym, telling Bucky about his and Pepper’s efforts to get him his discharge papers and back pay as what must be the world’s most absurdly long-serving POW, get him basically resurrected back into this world, things that terrify Bucky to even think about. Pepper’s small army of lawyers have made all the arrangements, and Steve’s been using his status like a weapon with the DOD.

It’s made Bucky surly and frantic through their sparring, hitting harder than normal and using attack moves on Steve he usually doesn’t. The more Steve talks, the sloppier Bucky gets, until Steve drops in the idea of seeing Peggy while they’re down there signing papers, and Bucky loses focus completely. There are still days when Bucky doubts Steve’s sanity. 

“This is gonna hurt,” Steve says, and lines his thumbs and fingers up alongside Bucky’s nose.

“Just call Bruce, for fuck’s sake!” Bucky bellows. “Don’t you--”

There’s a sudden, searing pain as Steve sets his nose, examines it, then does it again. “There, just as adorable as always.” He sticks his fingers up Bucky’s nostrils, and then yanks again. “Good, that’s good.” Bucky’s chest heaves with the pain. Steve dabs his nose again with the towel, says, “Let’s get some ice.”

“You asshole. I hate you.” His head is spinning in a way it hasn’t since he was in withdrawal. 

Steve’s grinning. “Yeah, well, remember how much I hated you when you did it to me?” He offers his hand to help Bucky up, but Bucky swats it away.

“Someone else broke your nose that time, jackass. You’re the one who just broke mine.” He stands up, but lets Steve put his arm around him, walk him toward the locker room. Just for the hell of it, Bucky elbows him in the gut with his metal arm, and Steve lets out an “ooof!” It’s only slightly satisfactory.

The locker room is as plush as the rest of this building, almost like a spa. Steve finds a cold pack in the first-aid locker and presses it gently to Bucky’s nose, while stuffing some tissues inside to stanch the bleeding. Bucky leans against the sink counter, glaring. 

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry,” Steve says, but the way he’s smiling isn’t contrite enough. Bucky stomps on his instep, which makes Steve lose it and laugh. “What was it about mentioning Peggy that made you stop like that?” He puts his hands on Bucky’s shoulders, almost petting him like he’s a dog.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I don’t know, Steve, the fact that you want to bring a terrifying assassin -- one she probably knew about by reputation -- to the bedside of a nearly hundred-year-old woman or that it’s the guy her old heartthrob was in love with?”

“She knows you’re alive. We’ve talked about it. She knows what happened to you.”

“But you haven’t told her about Hydra being inside SHIELD.”

“No.” Steve looks away. “You don’t want to do any of this, just say so.”

“I really don’t. I just...this is willfully walking into a trap. How could they not be planning to arrest me? Lock me away in a black site facility.”

“Because they won’t. Don’t underestimate Pepper Potts and the SI lawyers. Or me.”

“Believe me, I don’t. But. I don’t know that I need to be legitimate again. No amount of money is worth that fear. And what the hell would I even do with all of it, anyway?”

“The kinds of things I’ve done with mine. There’s a lot of good you could do.” Steve sighs. “I knew it was a long shot. I did. I just want closure for you. To put that chapter behind you and keep writing this new one. But it’s always your choice. Your decision.” Christ, Steve’s always so fucking _earnest_. That’s what makes it so hard with him, always so hard.

Bucky understands what Steve’s saying. He really does. And he knows that it’s been a lot of work on Steve’s and Pepper’s parts, and they’re doing it because they care about him. “Let me think about it? When I’m not standing here with tissue up my nose and an ice pack on my face, you son of a bitch.”

“You’re getting some really amazing shiners. Still want me to get Bruce?”

“Seriously? Amazing? That’s what you got?” Bucky sets the ice pack down, moves his hand up to Steve’s hair, and then yanks his head back roughly. Steve makes a low noise, somewhere between a laugh and groan. “You want some amazing bruises of your own, you punk?” Bucky leans forward to bite and suck at his throat, as hard as he can, moving up and down, back and forth, while Steve whimpers. He tries to wriggle free, but Bucky just clamps down hard on his hair, locks his leg behind Steve’s, covering Steve’s neck in hickeys.

“Jesus, Buck,” Steve groans, his hand clutching Bucky’s elbow. Bucky bites his earlobe and then looks at Steve, licking his lips. “Is this gonna be payback?” Steve asks, and he doesn’t sound the least bit upset about it, his eyes glimmering with lust.

“Here’s some payback,” Bucky says, and drives his mouth so hard against Steve’s he can feel the lip split under his teeth. He sticks his tongue as far back in Steve’s throat as he can reach. He expects Steve to push him away in annoyance, but instead Steve sucks on his lower lip so roughly Bucky thinks it might come off. His dick twitches, he has to pull away because he can’t breathe. He pulls the tissue out of his nostrils but he still can’t breathe. With his index and middle fingers, he wipes away the blood trickling off of Steve’s lower lip, and Steve sucks his fingers in his mouth. Bucky slowly drags them out, flat against his tongue, while licking into Steve’s mouth as his fingers withdraw. 

Then Bucky shoves him up against the lockers, pulling Steve’s shirt off. He rakes fingers down Steve’s torso, etching pink welts in the carved marble of his chest. Steve leans down, kisses and bites Bucky’s neck, sucking hard on his skin. 

So Steve wants a little competition for who can inflict more bruises. Fine by him. He squeezes the base of Steve’s neck, knowing it’ll leave finger marks, grinning against Steve’s shoulder. Steve shudders, lets out a choked-off bleat as Bucky’s real hand shoves down into his pants, under the cup, and grabs his already-hard cock.

“Lock the door,” Bucky says, and Steve laughs, threading his fingers into Bucky’s hair and pulling his head back, scraping his teeth down Bucky’s neck. It fucking hurts to have his head back like that, but Bucky shivers with pleasure, too, and that’s something of a revelation. 

“JARVIS, lock the door, please,” Steve says, and Bucky chuckles, because he keeps forgetting it’s that simple. Steve brings his knee up between Bucky’s thighs, pressing hard against his balls, and rubs it back and forth. He lets go of Bucky’s hair and tears at Bucky’s t-shirt to get it off, shoving his sweatpants down, Steve’s nails scratching against his skin. He’s frantically trying to get his shoes off, and so is Steve. Bucky hauls Steve over to the bench and pushes him down on his back. Bucky’s sweats are halfway down his ass, hanging on in front only because they’re draped over his hard-on. He kneels down at the end of the bench, pulling the rest of Steve’s clothing off. 

Steve’s gorgeous, sweating and flushed and bruised, and Bucky lightly bites at his nipple, roughly thumbing the other one while Steve writhes and squirms. He licks and sucks the delicate skin of his lower belly and groin. “Hang on,” Bucky says and stumbles up to the counter, going through all the fancy little toiletry bottles till he finds some lotion. He stands in front of Steve, who pulls his arms up above his head, gripping the sides of the bench, his ass nearly hanging off the end. Steve _has_ to know how he looks doing that. “Christ almighty, you are incredible,” Bucky says, his voice thick with want. “I wanna watch you fly apart under my hands.”

Steve licks his lips, stares at him so intently Bucky thinks he might come right then and there. He gets down on his knees, pulls Steve’s hips toward him with one hand and slicks himself up with the other, then balances Steve above him as he shoves inside. Steve mutters something darkly to himself and Bucky grins as he thrusts into him, a sweet-rough rhythm and Steve rocking with him.

It’s not because of the broken nose that Bucky can’t breathe now -- it’s looking at Steve like this, arched back and utterly lost in his pleasure, pleasure that Bucky’s privileged to give him. It wasn’t sex or the knowledge of physical pleasure that Bucky had missed the most, but the intimacy, the _trust_ that Steve shows him when he allows himself to be lost like this, when he puts himself so completely in Bucky’s hands. 

Bucky strokes Steve’s dick in time with his thrusts, and Steve’s just in so many pieces now that within moments he’s spurting over Bucky’s hand, little half-breathed “yeah”s panted out over and over. Bucky watches him, the way his grip tightens on the bench, the way his muscles flex and twist as he writhes in climax. Seeing him lose it makes Bucky pump faster and faster until he’s cresting that wave too, collapsing forward over Steve as his climax shakes his whole body and he’s pulled into deep water, obscuring his vision, dark and blue like Steve’s eyes. 

“God, what you do to me, Steve. What you do to me. You can’t know.” He’s trying to breathe, trying to swim up to the surface, body pulsing with the waves.

Steve pulls his arms down, tangles his fingers in Bucky’s hair, but gently this time, lovingly. His weight is on Bucky’s arms, but he doesn’t want to put him down, ever. “It’s the same thing you do to me,” Steve says thickly. He can’t stop quivering, so he slides Steve back a little onto the bench and climbs up, wiping Steve off with a dampened towel, stroking his skin with his real hand as he goes. “You take such good care of me,” Steve says, his eyes closed, a content smile plastered on his face. 

“Not half so much as you deserve,” Bucky says, and kisses his split lip, the scrapes along his chest. He straddles Steve’s hips, traces his fingers along his ribs, then leans down and tucks his head up onto Steve’s shoulder. “Okay. I’ll go to D.C. and sign the papers. Because you trust me and you believe in me.” Steve folds his arms around Bucky and sighs.

“So all it takes to get you to reconsider things is to rough you up a bit and let you fuck me?”

“I’m so transparent.”

Steve strokes his back. “How’s the nose?”

“Better. How’s the lip?” Bucky asks, and Steve just snorts.

“You know it’s movie night tonight, right?”

Bucky groans. “Tony’s gonna flip his lid when he sees us.” 

They both laugh, almost giggling like little boys. Then Steve grows solemn, puts his hands on Bucky’s face. “Buck, are we really gonna do this all day? Pretend you don’t know what else today is?”

Bucky sits up. “I don’t--”

“Do you really not remember that today’s your birthday, or have you just been trying to ignore it?”

No wonder Steve’s been acting so strange the past few days. Bucky rubs his eyes. “Hand to God, I did not know. Huh.” He feels something twist inside, eely and cold. “So that’s why you’ve brought all this stuff up now.”

“Listen. Everyone knows not to surprise you, but they wanted to do something to acknowledge it. I told them I’d pave the way.” He grins, but it seems a little hollow.

“Do something like what?” he asks, flat. 

“Nothing special, just cake, drinks. And everybody’s here. I told them it’d drive you crazy if they got you presents.” 

“Yeah,” he says distantly. Steve turns Bucky’s head back to face him, making him focus.

“Please don’t. Please. You deserve to have people care about you.”

He nods, swallowing, knows Steve’s right, that something as simple as a birthday party is safe. But it’s the old Bucky’s life that people will be celebrating. The old Bucky’s life that Steve’s been talking about all day. “Okay,” he says. He can do this, he tells himself, he can. He can be there for Steve. He knows Steve will be disappointed if he doesn’t go, that he’ll blame himself for doing something wrong. “I’ll do the best I can.”

“I’m right here with you. And if you need to back out, that’s okay. Everyone will understand. But you deserve to have people do something for you.”

“You just waited till the afterglow to nail me with this, didn’t you?”

Steve chuckles, kisses his fingers. “No. I really did think at some point you were going to tell me you knew what day it was.”

“Let’s go get cleaned up before I change my mind.” They throw on enough clothing to get back to the apartment and head for the shower. 

When they get upstairs to the break room, Stark’s eyes nearly bug out of his head at the sight of their bruised and battered faces; everyone else puts up a good front of pretending they don’t see it. While they’re getting movie snacks, Tony keeps staring at them, smirking. He finally breaks down. “No one’s gonna say anything about this? Look at these two!” he mutters as Steve and Bucky glance at each other. 

“You can’t even see the best ones,” Bucky says suggestively, and Tony bounces on his feet. Steve erupts into laughter. 

“Should I get the architect in to reinforce your floor for supersoldier sex hijinks?” Natasha grabs his ear and twists. “I might have to charge extra for rent if this is a thing. What?” Tony bellows as Pepper grabs his other ear.

Natasha and Pepper frog-march Stark into the theatre section. Everyone else settles in to enjoy the movie, something Tony calls a classic but that came after Steve and Bucky’s time. Bucky doesn’t really watch it, lost in worries about what he’s opened himself up to, feeling like the past is coming up behind him to stick a knife in his guts. He knows Steve wouldn’t put him in danger, he knows that in his bones, but Steve also believes in people in a way Bucky never could. 

Partway through the movie he leaves to be alone for a bit, sitting at a table and flipping through a magazine, drinking some of Stark’s very expensive Scotch. Even though he can’t get drunk anymore, he does love the taste of good Scotch. After a while, Thor comes out and joins him, because he’s often perplexed by movies and he seems to enjoy real people much more than fictional ones; Bucky’s finally got Thor to stop apologizing to him for the lightning and now they’re on good terms. Thor likes to hear stories about him and Steve when they were young, because their little world was so different from the world he sees now, and Bucky likes to hear Thor talk about the battle of New York and getting to know Steve. He always enjoys hearing about Steve from other people’s perspectives, learn the filter through which they see this man he loves so much.

After they’ve drunk nearly a bottle of Scotch -- Thor can really put the hard stuff away -- the others file out of the theatre, laughing and talking about the movie. Stark starts some music and Bucky knows it’s birthday time, so he takes some deep breaths, watches Steve’s face as Pepper gets the cake -- a very elegant chocolate and raspberry concoction, because she knows how much Bucky loves raspberries -- and Tony and Clint make drinks. Steve’s grinning ridiculously when he leans down and says, “Happy birthday, Buck,” and kisses him right in front of everyone else. For once it’s Bucky who blushes and not Steve. 

Pepper helps him blow out the candles and cut the cake. It’s all very familial and warm, but he feels perilously close to losing control, breathing and breathing to calm himself. At one point he realizes Steve’s been telling them some story or other about when they were kids, and Stark turns to him and says, “So, we know you were quite the dashing figure back then. But what I’ve always wanted to know is -- did Rogers always smell like unicorn manes and crushed, distilled rainbows, or was that something that came with the serum?”

“No,” Bucky says, and takes a few more bites of cake. It’s too sweet, but he’d never want Pepper to think he doesn’t enjoy it. 

“I _knew_ it!” Tony crows. The others roll their eyes.

Bucky looks up at him. “That was me. Steve always smelled of Pegasus feathers and essence of moonbeams.”

Stark grins, clutches at Pepper’s arm. “I love him, please tell me we’re keeping him forever and ever.” 

Steve’s grinning, and Bucky’s suddenly flooded with an awareness that he belongs here. That this really is a family for him, too, not just for Steve. It probably won’t last, but for right now, this is the place he fits. He’s not a beast in a cage anymore, not a faceless killer, broken in a thousand pieces but sealed inside skin and passing as human. He _is_ human, his soul has finally awakened and opened its eyes.

Tony asks JARVIS for some different music. Everyone starts dancing, and Steve offers his hand to Bucky. “Feel like cutting a rug?” It’s been a long time since Bucky thought about dancing, how much he loved it once. It’s not that he dislikes the music, though he’s still getting used to it, but it’s maybe just a step too far for him right now. This stretches him past his limits.

“Not ready for that just yet,” he says, and smiles at Steve to reassure him. “Did you ever learn to dance?”

“These days, it’s mostly about standing around and jerking your arms. I mean, look at Thor.” Sam and Natasha come up behind Steve and pull him with them, and Sam starts moving Steve’s hips around while Natasha puts his arms over her shoulders. Steve’s blushing but smiling, awkward and boyish. It’s hard to make out the words to most of the songs, but he hums along when he can, watching everyone have a good time, especially Steve, who’s staring at him over Natasha’s head, leaning into Sam’s body as they dance.

They’re all insane, Bucky thinks, in their own unique ways, all of them damaged, too. Even the ones he’d thought had it so good have experienced their own wounds. And they’ve all endured, come together to find some kind of purpose and acceptance. He’s just another stray brought into the pack. 

After a while, Bucky leaves, smiling at Steve to let him know he should stay. Steve nods at him, waves. 

He goes back to the apartment, cleans up a little, sits down with a book to wait for Steve. This life is a mystery now, there is no ending written for him the way there used to be after every mission, put away, book closed. Steve gave him a name, a history, a voice, and now a future that’s open-ended, vast. 

Later, Bucky and Steve lie in bed, both sleepy but not able to sleep. Steve’s drawing on Bucky’s metal arm with colored pens, beautiful swirling lines that remind him of something Middle Eastern or Indian. Bucky’s real arm is tucked up under his cheek, he watches Steve, who looks, even now, like that young man he’d watch drawing intently in a Brooklyn tenement, all bony arms and furrowed brow. 

“You know I’m never going to be completely all right,” Bucky says softly. Steve keeps drawing, finesses the swirls and shading. “Not one hundred percent. I’m a lost cause in that regard.”

“Well, I’ll contact Saint Jude right away, then. Initiate a conversation about that. Seeing as how I’m such a saint. I have them on speed dial, you know. And anyway, I’m never going to be one hundred percent either.” He puts the cap on the pen. “There.”

“But I had a good time tonight, as much as I could. I like watching you with them. Knowing you have a family now, at last.” He flexes his hand and arm, turning it this way and that. “It’s gorgeous.”

“Not as gorgeous as you.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Christ, you are such a sap.” He untucks his right arm, runs his fingers across Steve’s lips. 

“I am. Steve Rogers: a sap for Bucky Barnes since 1924.”

Bucky pulls Steve to him, rests his cheek against Steve’s. It takes all his strength not to crush Steve in his arms, he’s so full of love for him. There _is_ a shore, he thinks, and now it’s in sight.

 

Peggy’s sitting near the window when Steve and Bucky arrive for their visit, a book in her lap and the TV droning softly behind her, unnoticed. Steve’s glad to see her sitting up this time, and she seems alert, bright with the expectation of seeing them. He goes in first, bending down to give her a kiss, and says, “Bucky’s here, if you’re up to seeing him.”

“I’ve been waiting all day for it,” she says with mock crossness, and turns to Bucky, who’s standing by the door, anxiety floating like a cloud over him. She motions him in, smiling serenely, so beautiful still, so elegant. Steve loves her grey hair, the hard-won lines in her face. His love for her has not diminished or wavered in all the time he’s been awake. 

As Bucky comes closer, tentative and shy, she holds her unsteady hand out toward him, and Steve pulls up another chair for Bucky. He hides his metal hand in his jacket pocket, but allows her to wrap her hand around his real one. 

Neither of them speak for a few minutes, Bucky just looks at her, searching her eyes for something Steve can’t identify. And she stares back at Bucky, melancholy, regretful. Then she reaches out to him and Bucky leans forward as she cups his chin in her palm, and she says, “Oh, my dear boy. What they’ve done to you. What you’ve endured...” 

“But I’m here now,” he says softly, “it’s okay. I’m safe now.” He guides her hand to her lap, holds it there. 

“When Steve told me, I--”

“I know. It’s no one’s fault. No one could have known.” Like Steve, Peggy had condemned herself for believing he’d died, for not somehow knowing the true identity of the Winter Soldier, as if that could have been possible. But guilt was like that, it defied reason.

Peggy sighs, dabs at her eyes with a tissue, and glances at Steve. “Did it go well with the defense department? You’re squared away?”

“Yeah, all set,” Steve says. “Bucky’s officially a civilian now. I can’t order him around anymore.” He smiles at Bucky, and Bucky flashes him an affectionate smile back. Steve tells her about the committees and the interviews, Peggy listening intently, probably remembering her own experiences with bureaucracy.

He can see her getting tired, but then Peggy fixes him with a look, knowing and kind. “Steve, may I have a moment alone with James?” she asks. She’d never learned to call him Bucky.

“Of course,” he says, and goes over to stand by the door. He watches Bucky out of the corner of his eye as he leans close to her, concentrating. She strokes the side of his face, and he nods a few times, says things too quiet for Steve to hear. Back in the war, Steve and Peggy had always talked about Bucky in the most elliptical way, but he’d always believed that she intended for Bucky to be part of their lives. She’d never explicitly stated that she believed there was more to his relationship with Bucky than met the eye, but it had been clear, at least, to him. 

Eventually Bucky looks up at Steve, waves him back over, and wipes at his eyes. They talk about nothing, and everything, for the rest of the afternoon, until it’s time for them to leave, both of them giving her a goodbye kiss on the cheek. Each time Steve leaves her, he wonders if it will be the last, makes a silent prayer to a God he doesn’t even fully believe in anymore that she’ll be here just a little while longer. Bucky gives him the space he needs to grapple with his emotions, staying silent beside him, occasionally touching his arm.

They’ve mostly kept to their hotel while they’ve been in D.C., when they’re not stuck in small rooms with bureaucrats. But Steve wanted Bucky to see the World War Two memorial, and so they head to the Mall in the late afternoon sunshine. Bucky’s even quieter than usual when they get there, reading through the parks service pamphlet. Under the Atlantic pavilion, though, Bucky squints and offers a dry, “Kind of grandiose, don’t you think?”

Steve huffs, says, “Yeah, it’s a lot of granite and bronze and laurel wreaths, that’s for sure.”

In no time people recognize who’s standing in their midst, and Steve is surrounded by fans and autograph seekers. Of course he stops to sign things and let them take photos with him, he’s never been good at turning people away, but he watches as Bucky meanders off, taking in the surroundings. Bucky stops in front of the short wall listing the battles in Italy, kneels down, and touches his fingertips to the carved name of Azzano. 

Eventually, Bucky walks over to stand in front of the New York pillar, stuffs his hands in his pockets. Steve signs the last of the autographs, but as he starts toward Bucky, an older woman comes up to him and says quietly, “Captain Rogers? My name is Rose Dempsey. My father was Jimmy Oliver. He was in the SSR at the same time you served.”

“Oh, my gosh,” Steve says, and takes her hands. “How wonderful to meet you. I remember him very well. What a great coincidence.” That seems to surprise her, and she shakes her head. 

“He was just a private, I’m surprised you would remember him. But oh, how he used to talk about you and the Howling Commandos. You walked on water, according to him.” She sees Steve glance in Bucky’s direction and she adds, “That young man you came here with. I -- maybe I’m losing my mind, but that’s Bucky Barnes, isn’t it?”

Steve nods. He knows it’s just a matter of time before more and more people will know Bucky’s alive. “It is. It’s an even stranger story than my own. We’re both a little out of our time.”

“I was so happy when we heard the news about you. It can’t have been easy for you, though.” She has the kindest eyes, so much like Peggy’s eyes, he thinks.

“It’s not so bad,” he says, smiling. “Would you like to say hello? Bucky knew everyone, he was that kind of fella.”

She shakes her head. “No, I didn’t want to interrupt you at all, but I thought...well, I thought I should at least say hello. I know this must bring back some memories for you both.” She clasps his hands again, and then stands up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “It was lovely to meet you. So, so lovely.” He asks for her contact information and puts it in his phone, thinking it might be nice to meet up later and share some stories.

Taking advantage of the lull, he makes for Bucky, who glances up at him, a melancholy smile on his face. Steve slings his arm around Bucky’s shoulders and they look up at the sun filtering through the trees and the arches of the pillars. “I’m sorry about all that,” Steve says.

“Don’t be. It’s good, it reminds me of the old days. I’m just...it’s a little sad, in a way. Thinking of what we left behind. And how we left it there.”

“One of the people who came up to me back there is the daughter of Private Jimmy Oliver. Do you remember him? Can you remember the other fellas in the SSR?”

“Yeah, I do. Wow. Don’t that beat all.”

“She recognized you. But she didn’t want to intrude.” They walk slowly over to the field of stars as they talk. Bucky just shakes his head, stunned. 

As he stares at the bronze stars that cover the wall, Bucky swallows repeatedly, then says, hushed, “The pamphlet says each star represents one hundred dead. I suppose they don’t make stars for the ones who just fell.” Steve squeezes his shoulder. Remembers the dark sky that hid behind Bucky’s eyes once he returned from Zola’s lab, the turmoil that tore at his soul for so very long, and that Steve was powerless to soothe. It’s still there, Steve knows, just a nightmare or difficult day away from taking over Bucky’s mind at any given time. 

They’re quiet for a while and Steve’s aware that people are looking at him again, but he focuses on Bucky. 

Bucky presses his fingers to his eyes. Eventually he raises his head, looking at the stars, and says, “She remembers that she forgets. That on good days like today, she knows she’s forgotten your visits more often than she can recall them. When she does, it tears her up inside that you’ve been so lonely.”

Steve feels the sharp prickle of tears at the back of his eyes, his throat constricts, and he watches Bucky as he shakes it off, continues. “And she feels like the remembering will be easier now, knowing that I’m here to take care of you again.” Bucky turns to him and smiles so sadly Steve thinks his heart is going to crack open and he’ll bleed out on the pavement. “The rest is between her and me, though.”

“Understood,” Steve says, and squeezes Bucky’s shoulder again. He pulls himself together. “Let me show you something else.” He steers Bucky toward the bas-relief sculptures that line the walls around the entrance until he finds the one for the SSR. Bucky gives a thin laugh, puts his fingers to their own images, young and heroic for eternity in bronze. He traces over the lines of Peggy’s face. As many times as Steve’s seen representations of himself, it’s never ceased to feel surreal, and it’s got to be even stranger for Bucky.

“It’s going to change for us, soon. Now that people know you’re alive. It won’t be private anymore. But I think you’re strong enough to handle it.” Steve watches Bucky’s face, but he doesn’t look back at Steve, just nods and stares at the sculpture.

The daylight is fading, and the lights in the fountains and around the memorial are coming on. He’s never seen this space at night, thinks it must be prettier once it’s all lit up. “Hell, were we ever this young, Steve?” Bucky says. “Really? I saw that exhibit at the Smithsonian, and I just couldn’t believe we could ever have been those boys.” 

“You know, I’ve been living in the future so long, I don’t even remember what it felt like to be that boy.” He huffs out a laugh. “I always thought in a way that you would be good in the future. I belonged back there, I was a product of my time, but you...I don’t know, you seemed like you would fit in the future.”

“Well, here I am,” Bucky says wryly, elbowing Steve. He elbows back, and they push at each other, laughing. “Here we are.”

“Come on, let’s go back to the hotel.”

After Bucky spends some time in the shower -- a necessary thing to help him cope with difficult days, Steve has learned -- they order room service. Bucky’s wearing boxer briefs and a giant, loose sweatshirt and heavy socks, his hair pulled back messily, and Steve is so charmed by the image he makes Bucky sit by the window and let him sketch him, just reading and drinking his coffee, a halo of city lights behind him. Bucky never had much patience for posing for Steve back in the day, he’d get restless or horny, but these days Bucky always appears happy to settle in and be his muse.

When he’s done, Steve sits on the loveseat behind him, pulling Bucky between his legs and wrapping his arms around him. Steve loves holding Bucky like this, as Bucky so often held him when they were younger, heart beating against his back, breath warming him. Steve had known then what it was to feel safe, and he cherishes these chances to make Bucky feel that way now. Bucky leans his head back on Steve’s shoulder, says, “Tomorrow before we leave, I want to show you a painting. After I saw you that night in your old apartment, it -- it comforted me, I guess, and I would go back over and over to look at it. I wanted to hear what you’d say about it.”

“I’d love to.” He runs his fingers through Bucky’s loose hair, blue light from the windows shimmering across it as he touches it, over and over. “Could you ever have imagined that night that we’d get here?”

They’re quiet for a while, until Bucky says, “Thank you. For never giving up and for bringing me home. And for pushing me to come down here and do this. You were right. I feel like I finished one chapter and can start on another. And it was good to see Peggy.”

“Well, I’m always right, so.” Bucky snorts and elbows him in the belly. 

“Can I see the sketch?”

Steve pulls back the pages and hands him the pad. “It’s wonderful. You always made me look so much better than I had a right to.” He flips through it, starts laughing as he realizes nearly every page is a drawing of himself. “Geez, Rogers, someone might think you have a problem.”

“I do. It’s well documented. Barnesophilia. I’ve been afflicted my whole life.” Steve kisses his ear, his neck, his shoulder.

Bucky reaches over to the table and grabs Steve’s pencil. He roughly draws in a section of a tree trunk, then adds a heart with the initials S and B on either side. Steve grins against his neck. “I love you.” He’s never said it like that, just those three words flat out and unadorned. He doesn’t need to hear Bucky say it back to him, in fact, Steve doesn’t want him to. Bucky turns, wraps his arms around Steve’s neck, and kisses him.

“Yeah, you got a problem.”

 

The next time Bucky’s on a roof with a rifle tracking Steve in his sights, he’s doing it as part of the team -- but it’s the same enemy as last time. At least, he hopes so, or that means there’s more than one guy out there building giant robot spider things and sending them to destroy parts of New York. This time they’re in Brooklyn, not too far from where he and Steve grew up, or as Tony inexplicably said in a dramatic voice as they were gearing up, “This time it’s personal.” 

“I really, really want to find out who this asshole is,” Tony says over comms, zooming over the building Bucky’s on. Clearly whoever’s making these things has learned from the last time, because even an EMP blast doesn’t disable it this time, and there are more ground troops as well. The worst part is that there are now at least four or five mini versions of the robot spider thing that they’ve counted so far, and they’re rampaging through the city blocks, making it more difficult to contain the area of fighting, not to mention keep the group together. And there’s still no TOC. “I think he’s just screwing with us. Why can’t he pick a different city at least? Would anyone care if he knocked down a few blocks of Detroit? Philly? I ask you.”

Barton’s a couple buildings over, firing down on the minions, and Steve’s on the ground off to his left, dodging both troops and pulse blasts from the robot. Barton says, “I think it’s devolved into a grudge match.”

“It vexes me. I’m terribly vexed,” Tony says, as he tries another angle with a small rocket to one of the legs, which explodes but doesn’t seem to do much of anything. “That’s from a movie--”

“I know!” Bucky and Steve shout in unison. Suddenly Sam alights next to him, just as the Hulk roars and takes a swipe through a cluster of the troops. Well, that was effective. He and Sam both exhale loudly. It never fails to astonish Bucky that someone as gentle as Bruce can turn into that thing. 

“Where’s Widow?” Bucky asks him, because the last he saw of her, she was chasing one of the mini robots with Sam soaring behind her.

“Two down, a couple more to go. I just wanted to see if you need anything.”

Bucky fires on a handful of troops, looks up from his scope. He blinks a couple times. Once in a while he forgets that he’s part of a team, remembers only relying on himself or sometimes mercenaries who were there to do his bidding. “Actually, a rifle up here is inefficient,” he says, and he swears he can _hear_ Steve smiling over the comms. “Can you drop me down there on that low roof? I wanna break out the minigun.” 

“Oh, geez, _that_ thing?” Sam says, making a face. When he brought it along, Steve had done a doubletake, remembering all too well facing off against that when they attacked him on the bridge. But he also knew how effective it was, so he’d shrugged, told Bucky to go to town. Sam hauls him down to the next building, and Bucky gets into position as Sam flies away.

The wind changes direction and something catches Bucky’s eye on top of the robot. He looks through his binoculars, flipping over to infrared. “Hey, Stark, can you take a look at the top of the robot with infrared? I think there’s something there, a hole or something in the shielding. Less than a meter.”

“I’ll be damned,” Stark says. “Yeah, it looks like some kind of vulnerability.”

“Well, then, stop talking and exploit it,” Natasha shouts, breathing heavy as she runs. Bucky picks up the minigun and starts blasting at the ground troops while Stark does his thing.

“Where’s Thor?” Barton asks. “Maybe he could hit the soft spot with lightning.”

“I am attempting to demolish this puny robot,” Thor says. “It continually eludes me.”

“I can hit it if someone distracts it for me,” Stark says, “I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home, they’re not much bigger than that.” He swoops up above the robot, trying to keep just out of range of the missiles it sends his way. “That’s from Star--”

“We know!” Bucky and Steve shout again. 

The Hulk wades closer and Tony lets loose with a repulsor blast, there’s a flash of red light, the robot suddenly smokes and shakes. Tony hits it again, and then Thor comes up from behind, hurls a lightning bolt at it, and it goes down. The Hulk bounds over and stomps on it.

It’s just a matter now of finishing off the rest. Bucky cleans out the troops in front of him, pulls back on the minigun. “Christ, Barnes, you’re terrifying, have I told you that lately?” Barton says from behind him. 

“Yeah, but I’m _your_ terrifying now.”

Suddenly there’s a group headed for the building Barton’s on, and they’re climbing pretty effectively. Bucky switches to his rifle, gets a few of them, but calls down, “Hey, Steve, can you get up to the roof to help Barton?” Steve gives him a little salute and starts up the fire escape, jumping from ladder to window ledge, back and forth as he climbs. God, Bucky loves watching Steve move, it’s balletic and graceful and powerful. He’s so caught up in watching Steve he forgets to keep shooting. But then Steve gets up top, leaps across to Barton’s aid, and Bucky gets back to work.

Within a few minutes, everything’s under control. Bucky looks over at Steve, who’s giving him that satisfied smirk he gets when he finishes a fight. Bucky stashes his weapons to come back for them later. He jumps across to the next building, then the next. Barton’s on his way down to the ground, but Steve’s just standing there, watching Bucky jump. When he reaches the building next to Steve’s position, he says into his comms, “Switching to dark approach.”

“What? Why? Where?” Stark says, and then there’s a gaggle of voices saying, “Why are you switching off? Did we miss someone? Is stealth needed? Why is there stealth?” He laughs as he takes the earbud out and jumps onto the roof, landing in front of Steve. 

Steve’s taking his helmet off as Bucky approaches him, he shimmers with sweat, gorgeously flushed, and Bucky can scarcely breathe at the sight of him. That dark blue uniform suits him perfectly, Bucky loves the way it hugs his ass and shows off his shoulders, the way Steve’s blue eyes shine darker against it. He could throw Steve down on the roof and fuck his brains out right here, except that soon the helos will be sweeping by, and there will be cameras.

“God, you look so good,” Steve says to him, licking his lower lip. Then he turns crimson as he puts his hand to his ear and says, “Oh, yeah, sorry.” He takes his earpiece out. “Tony says we have no shame.” Bucky grabs him by the back of the neck and kisses him.

“I don’t know if this job is gonna work out,” Bucky says in between kisses. “I have trouble focusing when I watch you fight. You’re amazing.” He’s smiling so hard his face almost hurts. Bucky presses his mouth to Steve’s cheek, drinking in his scent.

Steve nuzzles his cheek, grins at him. “So are you.” He glances down at the street. “We ought to help them clean up.”

“They can do without us.” He takes Steve’s hand and tugs. “Come on.” Bucky starts running across the roof.

“Where are we going?” Steve asks, running behind him, the smile lighting up his face.

He glances over his shoulder and grins at Steve, the wind blowing his hair back and the sun warm on his face. “I’m taking you home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fudged the details of Bucky getting ready to ship out to suit my own purposes -- the reality of it was pretty different than what the movie set up, but this isn't totally accurate either.
> 
> There will be at least an idyllic epilogue coming at some point, and possibly a sideways related story (or could be a standalone, I don't know).

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I wanted to write a story that was as much about Steve and Bucky before and during the war as post-Winter Soldier?
> 
> A lot of the stories in the flashbacks and reminiscences are based on stories my parents told me, both of whom were just a few years younger than Steve and Bucky were in the movies; my father served in the war around the same time as they did.
> 
> I wish I could find a decent image online of Night and Her Daughter Sleep, the painting by Mary L. Macomber mentioned in Chapter 3, but [this one](http://americanart.si.edu/images/1988/1988.7_1a.jpg) is the best I can find and still doesn't do it justice. It's been at the Renwick Gallery, but hasn't been on display while the gallery is undergoing renovations, which I've ignored so that Bucky could find it. ;-)
> 
> If you enjoyed this, I'd love to know! Comments, recs, reblogging on [Tumblr](http://teatotally.tumblr.com/post/87239160345/new-captain-america-fic-dark-approach-10719) would be really encouraging.


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